Physiological Mimicry of Disease.
Now, theoretically, one or more of these physiological disturbances might be so obtrusive as to be the predominant feature of the syndrome and to mask the psychical element which might then be overlooked. Gastric and intestinal disturbances, for instance, or cardiac distress, might be so marked as not to be recognized as simply manifestations of an emotion, but be mistaken for true gastric, intestinal, or heart disease. Going one step further, if a person had a frequently recurring fear, as is so common, and the physiological symptoms were obtrusively predominant, these latter would necessarily recur in attacks and, overshadowing the psychical element, might well have all the appearance (both to the subject and the observer) of true disease of the viscera.
Now, as a fact this theoretical possibility is just what happens. It is one of the commonest of occurrences, although it is too frequently misunderstood.[[218]] A person, we will say, has acquired—owing to no matter what psychogenetic factor—a recurrent fear. This fear, or, in less obtrusive form, anxiety, or apprehension, is, we will say, of disease—heart disease or insanity or fainting or cancer or epilepsy or what not. It recurs from time to time when awakened by some thought or stimulus from the environment. At once there is an outburst of physiological, i.e., functional disturbances, in the form of an “attack.” There may be violent cardiac and respiratory disease, tremor, flushing, perspiration, diarrhœa, sensory disturbances, etc., followed by more or less lasting exhaustion. On the principle of complex building, which we have discussed in a previous lecture, the various physiological reactions embraced in such a scheme as I have outlined tend to become welded into a complex (or association psycho-neurosis), and this complex of reactions in consequence recurs as a syndrome every time the fear is reëxcited. On every occasion when the anxiety recurs, a group of symptoms recurs which is made up of these physical manifestations of emotion which are peculiar to the individual case. The symptoms, unless a searching inquiry is made into their mode of onset, sequence, and associative relations, will appear a chaotic mass of unrelated phenomena; or only certain obtrusive ones, which in the mind of the patient point to disease of a particular organ, are described by him. The remainder have to be specifically sought for by the investigator. The latter, if experienced in such psycho-neuroses, can often from his knowledge of the phenomena of emotion anticipate the facts and in a large degree foretell to the patient the list of symptoms from which he suffers. By those who lack familiarity with these functional disturbances mistakes in diagnosis are frequently made. Disease of the heart, or of the stomach, or of the nervous system is frequently diagnosed when the symptoms are simply the product of emotion. Quite commonly, when the symptoms are less related to particular organs, but more conspicuously embrace vasomotor, sensory, digestive disturbances (inhibition of function), and fatigue, the syndrome is mistaken for so-called neurasthenia.[[219]] Thus it happens that in recurrent morbid fears—known as the phobias or obsessions—a group of symptoms are met with which at first sight appear to be unrelated bodily disturbances, but which when analyzed are seen to be only a certain number of physiological manifestations of emotion welded into a complex. On every occasion that the fear recurs this complex is reproduced.
It now remains to study the effect of the emotions on the psychical side. This we shall do in the next lecture.
[196]. I use the word, not in the strict but in the popular and general sense, to include feeling, indeed all affective states, excepting where the context gives the strict meaning.
[197]. The James-Lange theory is disregarded here as untenable.
[198]. La Pathologie des Emotions, 1892.
[199]. Physiological Dilatation and the Mitral Sphincter as Factors in Functional and Organic Disturbances of the Heart, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, February, 1901; also, The Occurrence and Mechanism of Physiological Heart Murmurs (Endocardial) in Healthy Individuals, The Medical Record, April 20, 1889.
[200]. The emotional factor is a source of possible fallacy in all observations on arterial tension and must be guarded against.
[201]. Frederick Peterson and C. G. Jung: Psycho-Physical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph, Brain, Vol. XXX, July, 1907, p. 153.
[202]. The Work of the Digestive Glands (English Translation), London, 02.
[203]. For a summary of Cannon’s work, see his article, Recent Advances in the Physiology of the Digestive Organs Bearing on Medicine and Surgery, The Medical Journal of Medical Sciences, 1906, New Series, Vol. CXXXI, pp. 563-578.
[204]. American Journal of Medical Sciences, 1906, p. 566. See also “The Influence of Emotional States on the Functions of the Alimentary Canal,” by the same writer (ibid., April, 1909) for an interesting résumé of the subject.
[205]. American Journal of the Medical Sciences, April, 1909.
[206]. Cannon and de la Paz: American Journal of Physiology, April 1, 1911.
[207]. Cannon, Shohl, and Wright, Ibid., December 1, 1911.
[208]. These effects of adrenalin suggest that the secretion may take some part in pathological anxiety states.
[209]. Pathologie des Emotions, 1892.
The influence of emotion on the muscular system need hardly be more than referred to. Tremor, twitchings, particularly of the facial muscles, and other involuntary movements, as well as modifications of the tonus of the muscles, are common effects. All sorts of disturbances occur, ranging from increase of excitability to paralysis. Everyone knows that under the influence of powerful emotion, whether of joy, anger, or fear, there is discharged an increase of energy to the muscles, sometimes of an intensity which enables an individual to
[210]. The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, p. 266.
[211]. Note sur les modifications de la résistance électrique sous l’influence des excitations sensorielles et des émotions, C. R. Soc. de Biologie, 1888, p. 217.
[212]. Psycho-Physical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph in Normal and Insane Individuals, Brain, Vol. XXX, July, 1907.
[213]. Psychological Review, November, 1908, and January, 1909.
[214]. The Nature and Causation of the Galvanic Phenomena, Psychological Review, March, 1910, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, June-July, 1910.
[215]. Having demonstrated the development of electromotive force within the body, these experimenters assumed that every psycho-galvanic reaction was of this type. But plainly, their results do not contradict the phenomenon of diminished resistance of the body to an electric current brought about by emotion stimulating the sweat glands. The evidence indicates, as I have said, two types of psycho-galvanic phenomena.
[216]. On Certain Electrical Processes in the Human Body and Their Relation to Emotional Reactions, Archives of Psychology, March, 1911.
[217]. Morbid self-consciousness is commonly accompanied by fear and other emotions. Nausea, although the specific manifestation of disgust, not rarely is induced by fear.
[218]. A good example is that of an extreme “neurasthenic,” who had been reduced to a condition of severe inanition from inability to take a proper amount of food because of failure of digestion, nausea, and vomiting. Examined by numerous and able physicians in this country and Europe, none had been able to recognize any organic disease or the true cause of the gastric difficulty which remained a puzzle. As a therapeutic measure her stomach had been continuously and regularly washed out. Yet it was not difficult to recognize, after analyzing the symptoms and the conditions of their occurrence, that the disturbances of the gastric functions were due to complex mental factors, the chief of which, emotion, inhibited the gastric function, as in Cannon’s experiments, and indirectly or directly, induced the nausea and vomiting. The correctness of this diagnosis was recognized by the attending physician and patient. Sometimes a phobia complicates a true organic disease and produces symptoms which mimic the symptoms of the latter—heart disease, for example. In this case it is often difficult to recognize the purely phobic character of the symptoms. O. H. C. was such a case. Though there was severe valvular disease of the heart, compensation was good and there was little if any cardiac disability. The attacks of dyspnœa and other symptoms were unmistakably the physical manifestation of a phobia of the disease. The phobia had been artificially created by overcautious physicians.
[219]. One has only to compare routine out-patient hospital records with the actual state of patients to verify the truth of this statement. For purposes of instruction I have frequently done this before the class. The true nature of the psycho-neurosis and the irrelevancy of the routine record and diagnosis have, I believe, been commonly made manifest. Sometimes, however, of course, phobias complicate other diseases, and we have a mixed symptomatology.
LECTURE XV
INSTINCTS, SENTIMENTS, AND CONFLICTS
It is generally agreed that emotions proper (as distinguished from other affective states) may be divided into those which are primary (anger, fear, disgust, etc.), and those (jealousy, admiration, hatred, etc.), which are compounded of two or more primary emotions. McDougall has made a great contribution to our knowledge in having made clear that a primary emotion is not only instinctive, but is the central or psychical element in a reflex process consisting, besides, of an ingoing stimulus and an outgoing impulse. The whole process is the instinct.[[220]] It is of course innate, and depends on congenital prearrangements of the nervous system. The central element, the emotion, provides the conative or impulse force which carries the instinct to fulfilment. It is the motive power, the dynamic agent that executes, that propels the response which follows the stimulus. Though we speak of anger and fear, for example, as instincts, McDougall is unquestionably right in insisting that more correctly speaking the activated instinct is a process in which the emotion is only one factor—the psychical. The instincts of anger and fear should more precisely be termed respectively “pugnacity with the emotion of anger” and “flight with the emotion of fear.” In the one case, the emotion, as the central reaction to a stimulus, by its conative force impels to pugnacity; in the other fear impels to flight; and so with the other instincts and their emotions which I would suggest may be termed arbitrarily the emotion-instincts, to distinguish them from the more general instincts and innate dispositions with which animal psychology chiefly deals, and in which the affective element is feebler or has less of the specific psychical quality. For brevity’s sake, however, we may speak of the instinct of anger, fear, tender feeling, etc. Of course they are biological in their nature.
This formulation, by McDougall, of emotion as one factor in an instinctive process must be regarded as one of the most important contributions to our knowledge of the mechanism of emotion. It can scarcely be traversed, as it is little more than a descriptive statement of observed facts. It is strange that this conception of the process should have been so long overlooked. Its value lies in replacing vagueness with a precise conception of one of the most important of psychological phenomena, and enables us to clearly understand the part played by emotion in mental processes. It also shows clearly the inadequacy of the objective methods of normal psychology when attempting to investigate emotion by measuring the discharge of its impulsive force in one direction only, namely, the disturbances of the functions of the viscera (vasomotor, glandular, etc.). It discharges also along lines of mental activity and conduct.
When studying the organization of complexes, and in other lectures, we saw, as everyone knows in a general way, that affects may become linked with ideas, and that the force derived from this association gives to the ideas intensity and conative influence. Further, it was developed that the linking of a strong affect tends to stronger registration and conservation of experiences. This linking of an affect to an idea is one of the foundation stones of the pathology of the psycho-neuroses. One might say that upon it “hangs all the law and the prophets.”
Inasmuch as a sentiment, even in the connotations of popular language, besides being an idea always involves an affective element, it is obvious that a sentiment is an idea of an object with which one or more emotions are organized. But, obvious as it is, it remained for Mr. Shand, as McDougall reminds us, to make this precise definition. It is hardly a discovery as the latter puts it, as the facts themselves have been long known; but it is a valuable definition and its value lies in helping us to think clearly. Nearly every idea, if not every idea, has an affective tone of some kind, or is one of a complex of ideas endowed with such tone. This tone may be weak so as to be hardly recognizable, or it may be strong. Now, if emotion is one factor in an instinctive process, it is evident that a sentiment more precisely is an idea of an object linked or organized with one or more “emotion-instincts.” As McDougall has precisely phrased it, “A sentiment is an organized system of emotional dispositions centered about the idea of some object.” The impulsive force of the emotional dispositions or linked instincts becomes the conative force of the idea, and it is this factor which carries the idea to fruition. This is one of the most important principles of functional psychology. Its value can scarcely be exaggerated. Without the impulse of a linked emotion ideas would be lifeless, dead, inert, incapable of determining conduct. But when we say that an emotion becomes linked to, i.e., organized with that composite called an idea, we really mean (according to this theory of emotion) that it is the whole instinct, the emotional innate disposition of which the emotion is only a part that is so linked. The instinct has also afferent and efferent activities. The latter is an impulsive or conative force discharged by the emotion. Thus the affective element of an instinctive process—a process which is a biological reaction—provides the driving force, makes the idea a dynamic factor, moves us to carry the idea to fulfilment. As McDougall has expressed it:
"We may say, then, that directly or indirectly the instincts are the prime movers of all human activity; by the conative or impulsive force of some instinct (or of some habit derived from some instinct), every train of thought, however cold and passionless it may seem, is borne along toward its end, and every bodily activity is initiated and sustained. The instinctive impulses determine the ends of all activities and supply the driving power by which all mental activities are sustained; and all the complex intellectual apparatus of the most highly developed mind is but a means toward these ends, is but the instrument by which these impulses seek their satisfactions, while pleasure and pain do but serve to guide them in their choice of the means.
“Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed, or a steam engine whose fires had been drawn. These impulses are the mental forces that maintain and shape all the life of individuals and societies, and in them we are confronted with the central mystery of life and mind and will.”[[221]]
Furthermore the organization of the emotions with ideas to form sentiments is essential for self-control and regulation of conduct, and becomes a safeguard against mental, physiological, and social chaos.
“The growth of the sentiments is of the utmost importance for the character and conduct of individuals and of societies; it is the organization of the affective and conative life. In the absence of sentiments our emotional life would be a mere chaos, without order, consistency, or continuity of any kind; and all our social relations and conduct, being based on the emotions and their impulses, would be correspondingly chaotic, unpredictable, and unstable. It is only through the systematic organization of the emotional dispositions in sentiments that the volitional control of the immediate promptings of the emotions is rendered possible. Again, our judgments of value and of merit are rooted in our sentiments; and our moral principles have the same source, for they are formed by our judgments of moral value.”[[222]]
Summing up, then, we may say one of the chief functions of emotion is to provide the conative force which enables ideas to fulfill their aims, and one of the chief functions of sentiments to control and regulate the emotions.
Besides the instinctive dispositions proper there are other innate dispositions which similarly provide conative force and determine activities. For the practical purposes of the problems with which we are concerned, the conative or impulsive forces of all such innate dispositions and the sentiments which they help to form are here, it should be understood, considered together and included under instincts.
The conative function of emotion.—I shall take up in a later lecture[[223]] (in connection with the psychogenesis of multiple personality) the instincts and sentiments for discussion in more detail. The point to which I wish in this connection to call attention is that when a simple emotion-instinct, or an idea linked with an instinct (a sentiment) is awakened by any stimulus, its impulsive force is discharged in three directions: the first is toward the excitation of those articulated movements and ideas which guide and carry the instinct to fruition—to fight in the case of anger, to flee in the case of fear, to cherish in the case of love, etc. Second (accessory to the first) the excitation of many of the various visceral functions which we have reviewed reinforces the instinctive movements; e. g., for pugnacity or flight the increased respiration and activity of the heart increase the supply of oxygen and blood to the muscles; the secretion of sweat regulates the temperature during increased activity, the increased secretion of adrenalin and the increased secretion of sugar may, as Cannon suggests, respectively keep up the emotional state (after the cause of the fear or anger has subsided) and meet the demand of the muscles for an extra supply of food, etc.
Later experiments of Cannon seem to show that the adrenal secretion removes the fatigue of muscles; and, further, that stimulation of the splanchic nerves will largely recover fatigued muscles, increasing the efficiency as much as 100 per cent.[[224]] As emotion discharges its impulses along splanchic pathways to the adrenal glands, the inference as to the function of emotion in overcoming fatigue is obvious.
As to the sensory accompaniments of emotion, it is quite reasonable to suppose that their rôle is to supplement and reinforce in consciousness the affect, thereby aiding in arousing the individual to a full appreciation of the situation and to such voluntary effort (whether to guide and assist the instinct to its fulfillment or to repress it) as, in the light of past experiences, his judgment dictates. These sensory disturbances on this theory act as additional warnings in consciousness where the affect proper might be too weak.[[225]] Their function would be like that of pain in the case of organic disease. Pain is a biological reaction and a warning to the individual to rest the diseased part,[[226]] as well as a danger signal.
The third direction which the discharge of the impulsive force of the emotion takes is toward the repression of the conflicting conative force of such other emotions as would act in an antagonistic direction.[[227]] The utility of the discharge in this direction is supplementary to that of the excitation of the visceral functions: the former protects against the invasion of counteracting forces, the latter strengthens the force of the impulse in question.
Conflicts thus arise. When an emotion is aroused a conflict necessarily occurs between its impulse and that of any other existing affective state, the impulse of which is antagonistic to the aim of the former. Consequently instincts and sentiments which, through the conative force of their emotion, tend to drive the conduct of the individual in a course in opposition to that of a newly aroused emotion (instinct) meet with resistance. Whichever instinct or sentiment, meaning whichever impulse, is the stronger necessarily downs the other; inhibits the central and efferent parts of the process—ideas, emotions and impulses—though the afferent part conveys the stimulus to the central factor. Thus processes of thought to which the inhibited sentiment or instinct would normally give rise, or with which it is systematized, are likewise inhibited and behavior correspondingly modified. These statements are only descriptive of what is common experience. If one recalls to mind the principal primary emotions (instincts) such as the sexual, anger, fear, tender feeling, hunger, self-abasement, self-assertion, curiosity, etc., this is seen to be an obvious biological truth.[[228]] Fear is suppressed by anger, tender feeling, or curiosity (wonder), and vice versa; hunger and the sexual instinct by disgust.
What is true of the primitive instincts and their primary emotions is also true of compound instincts (emotions) and of sentiments, i.e., ideas about which one or several emotions are systematized. We may, therefore, for brevity’s sake, speak of a conflict of ideas or sentiments or emotions or instincts indiscriminately. In other words, any affective state may be suppressed by conflict with another and stronger affective state. A timid mother, impelled by the parental instinct, has no fear of danger to herself when her child is threatened. The instinct of pugnacity (anger) in this case not being antagonistic (in conflict) is not only not suppressed but may be awakened as a reaction to aid in the expression of the parental instinct. Per contra, when anger would conflict with this instinct, as when the child does wrong, the anger is suppressed by the parental instinct. Conversely, the sentiment of love for a particular person may be completely suppressed by jealousy and anger. Hatred of a person may expel from consciousness previous sentiments of sympathy, justice, pity, respect, fear, etc. The animal under the influence of the parental instinct may be incapable of fear in defense of its young, particularly if anger is excited. Fear may be suppressed in an animal or human being if either is impelled by great curiosity over a strange object. Instead of taking to flight, the animal may stand still in wonder. Similarly in man, curiosity to examine, for example, an explosive—an unexploded shell or bomb—inhibits the fear of danger often, as we know, with disastrous results. The suppression of the sexual instinct by conflict is one of the most notorious of the experiences of this kind in everyday life. This instinct cannot be excited during an attack of fear and anger, and even during moments of its excitation, if there is an invasion of another strong emotion the sexual instinct at once is repressed. Under these conditions, as with other instincts, even habitual excitants can no longer initiate the instinctive process. Chloe would appeal in vain to her lover if he were suddenly seized with fright or she had inadvertently awakened in him an intense jealousy or anger. Similarly the instinct may be suppressed, particularly in men, as every psycho-pathologist has observed, by the awakening of the instinct of self-subjection with its emotion of self-abasement (McDougall) with fear, shown in the sentiments of incapacity, shame, etc. The authors of “Vous n’avez rien à declarer” makes this the principal theme in this laughable drama. Indeed the principle of the suppression of one instinct by conflict with another has been made use of by writers of fiction and drama in all times.
This principle of inhibition by conflict allows us to understand the imperative persistence (if not the genesis) of certain sexual perversions in otherwise healthy-minded and normal people who have a loathing for such perversions in other people but can not overcome them in themselves. H. O., for example, has such a perversion, and yet the idea of this perversion in another person excites a lively emotion of disgust. In other words, at bottom, as we say, she is right-minded. How then account for the continuance of a self practice which she reprobates in another, censures in herself, and desires to be free of, and why does not the instinct of repulsion, and the sentiment of self respect, etc., act in herself as a safeguard? Introspective examination shows that when the sexual emotion is awakened, disgust and the sentiments of pride and self respect are suppressed, and the momentarily activating instinct determines all sorts of sophistical reasoning by which the perversion is justified to herself. As soon as the instinct accomplishes its aim it becomes exhausted, and at once intense disgust, meeting with no opposition, becomes awakened and in turn determines once more her right-minded ideas. Based upon this mechanism one therapeutic procedure would be to organize artificially so intense sentiments of disgust for the perversion and of self-respect that they would suppress the sexual impulse.[[229]]
Likewise the intense religious emotions (awe, reverence, self-abasement, divine love, etc.) may, if sufficiently strong, suppress the opposing instincts of anger, fear, play, and self-assertion, and emotions compounded of them. Examples might be cited from the lives of religious martyrs and fanatics.
If it is true that “the instincts are the prime movers of all human activity,” and that through their systematic organization with ideas into sentiments they are so harnessed and brought under subjection that they can be utilized for the well-being of the individual; and if through this harnessing the immediate promptings of the emotions are brought under volitional control, then all conduct, in the last analysis, is determined by the conative force of instincts[[230]] (and other innate dispositions) harnessed though they be to ideas. For though volition itself can control, reinforce, and determine the particular sentiment and thus govern conduct,—reinforce, for instance, a weaker abstract moral sentiment so that it shall dominate any lower brutish instinct or sentiment with which it conflicts, still, volition must be a more complex form of conation and itself issue from sentiments.
We need not enter into this troublesome problem of the nature of the will;[[231]] nor does it concern us. It is enough for our purpose to recognize that volition can reinforce a sentiment and thus take part in conflicts. In this way undesirable instincts and sentiments can he voluntarily overcome and inhibited or repressed and mental processes and conduct determined.
Nor are we concerned here with conduct which pertains more properly to social psychology. Our task is much more limited and simple, namely to inquire into the immediate conscious phenomena provoked by emotion, just as we have studied the physiological phenomena. We have seen that one such phenomenon is inhibition or repression of antagonistic instincts and sentiments provoked by conflict. (We shall see later that a conflict may arise between a conscious and an entirely subconscious sentiment with similar resulting phenomena.)
Repression of individual instincts may be lasting.—The repressions resulting from conflict which we have just been considering have been of a temporary nature lasting only just so long as the conflict has lasted. It is instructive to note that just as an instinct can be cultivated until it becomes a ruling trait in the character, so it can be permanently repressed, or so intensely repressed that it cannot be awakened excepting by unusual excitants or under unusual conditions. Such a persisting repression may be brought about either directly by volitional conflict or indirectly through the cultivation of antagonistic sentiments. The cultivation of an instinct is a common enough observation. Every one can point to some one of his acquaintance who has so fostered his instinct of anger or fear, has so cultivated the habit of one or the other reaction that he has become the slave of his emotion. Conversely, by the conative force of the will, and still more successfully by the cultivation of appropriate moral and religious and other sentiments, and complexes or “settings” systematized about those sentiments, a person can inhibit any instinct or any sentiment organized with that instinct. A bad-tempered person can thus, if he chooses, become good-tempered; a coward, a brave person; a person governed by the instinct of self-subjection can repress it by the cultivation of sentiments of self-assertion, and so on. The complete repression of unchristian instincts and sentiments is the acquired characteristic of the saintly character. The cultivation and repression of character traits and tendencies along these lines obviously belong to the domains of the psychology of character, social psychology, and criminology. But the persisting repression of at least one instinct—the sexual instinct—may take on pathological significance[[232]] while that of sentiments may lead to pathological dissociation and to the formation of disturbing subconscious states. To this latter type of repression we shall presently return.
That the sexual instinct may be involuntarily and persistently repressed by conflict is shown by the following case:
F. S. presented herself at the hospital clinic because of hysterical epileptiform attacks of six months’ duration. The attacks, which had been caused by an emotional trauma, were easily cured by suggestion. After recovery she fell into lamentations over the fact that she was sterile owing to both ovaries having been removed three years before because of pelvic disease. Just before the operation she had also suffered from an emotional trauma (fear). Although complete recovery from her symptoms had followed the operation, the sexual instinct had been abolished for three years. She was now much distressed over her inability to have children, complaining it had led to domestic infelicity, and apprehending divorce which had been threatened on the ground of her sterility. Having confidence in the strength of certain fundamental principles of human nature, and disbelieving the reasons alleged by the husband for divorce, I was able to restore domestic felicity, as well as demonstrate the psycho-physiological principle that the instinct was not lost but only inhibited. A single suggestion in hypnosis, psychologically constructed so as to bear a strong conative impulse that would overcome any other conflicting affective impulses and carry itself to fruition, restored not only the lost function[[233]] but conjugal happiness. That the instinct had only been inhibited is obvious. Whether the repressing factor had been fear or an involuntary auto-suggestion was not determined.
The following case is instructive not only because of the lasting dissociation of this instinct as a result of a conflict, but because the dissociation was volitionally and intentionally effected as a revenge. Other interesting features are the transference of the repressing revenge affect to an object (clothes which became an amulet or fetish to protect from sexual approaches, and the building of a complex (“raw oyster”) which became the bearer of the repressing force. X. Y. Z. received a deep wound to her pride on the first night of her honeymoon when her husband forgot his bride of a few hours who was awaiting him in the nuptial chamber. Happening to meet in the hotel some political acquaintances after the bride had retired, he became absorbed in a political discussion and—forgot! When he appeared after a prolonged absence and presented his excuses she was hurt in her pride and offended to think that she was of so little importance to him that he could become interested in talking politics.[[234]] There was anger too, and she vowed to herself to show, or, to use her own words, she “would be hanged if” she would show that she had any liking for or any interest in the marital intimacy. (She had never hitherto experienced any sexual feelings and, like most young girls, was entirely ignorant of the physical side. Nevertheless, from what she had been told, she had idealized the spiritual union of husband and wife and anticipated pleasurable experiences.) So purposely she repressed any interest, made herself absolutely indifferent to her spouse’s amorous attentions and experienced absolutely no sexual feeling; and so it continued for some days. In view of what later happened, and what we know of conflicts, we must believe that the impulses which carried her volition to fruition came from the emotions of anger, pride, and revenge.
Then one afternoon, just after she had finished dressing herself preparatory to going out, her husband came into her room and made advances to her. The idea appealed to her and she became emotionally excited at the thought. But in the middle of the act when the libido began to be aroused, suddenly she remembered that she had been snubbed at the first and that her rôle was to show no liking or interest. There were reawakened the emotions of pride, anger, and revenge, although not malicious revenge. Impelled by these emotions she actually gave herself suggestions to effect her purpose—a determination to get square with the past. She said to herself, “I must not like it; I must put it away back in my mind, I must become flabby as an oyster.” Thereupon she became “perfectly limp and uninterested and the feelings of flabbiness came over” her, and the beginning sexual feeling subsided at once. (That day she had eaten some raw oysters and had been impressed by them as the essence of flabbiness.) She admitted having continued during succeeding years to cherish this revengeful feeling as to the sexual relation—to get square with the past. She defended it, however, (although admitting the childishness of the original episode) on the ground that the slight to her pride must be viewed in connection with a long series of antecedent experiences. These must therefore be viewed as the setting which gave meaning to her idea of sexual relations with her husband. After this at the sexual approach under conventional marital conditions she for a time always volitionally induced this flabby “raw-oyster” sensation and feeling. Later it would automatically arise at the first indication or suggestion of the approach and counteract the libido. It was now no longer necessary to be on guard, knowing she could not be taken unawares. The consequence has been that the patient has never consciously experienced any sexual feeling beyond those first beginnings at the time of the experience when she was fully dressed. The patient can produce the “raw-oyster” state at will and exhibited it voluntarily during the examination. The state as then observed was one of lethargy or extreme relaxation. There was no general anæsthesia; pinching and pricking was felt perfectly, but, as she remarked, they carried no sensation of discomfort. “I do not care at the moment,” she explained, “what any one does to me; no sensation would cause pleasure or discomfort.” To arouse the state she thinks of the sexual approach first, and then the state comes. The sexual instinct has never been aroused by reading, or associative ideas of any kind. “It does not exist,” to quote her words.
Clothes became an amulet of protection in the following way: Ever since that afternoon when she was taken unawares in her clothes (and “almost liked it”) she realized and feared that sexual approaches when she was fully clothed might arouse the sexual instinct. Consequently she was more on her guard when fully clothed than at night for fear of being taken unawares. The idea that she must be on her guard when clothed became fixed, and, at first, when in this condition, she was always on her guard ready to defend herself by pugnacity. Then any approach at such times, if accompanied by physical contact, awakened an instinctive reaction which became a defense; it aroused the instincts of fear and anger. Any affectionate demonstration suggestive of the approach on the part of her husband would arouse these defensive instincts. On the other hand, when half dressed there has been no such ebullition of emotion; she has in consequence always believed that having clothes on would protect her against admirers. Indeed, as a fact, this is so, for any show of affection from any one manifested by a touch, even the friendly pat of the hand, will cause an unnecessary and unreasonable outburst of uncontrollable anger, such as to astonish and startle the offender. Clothes, becoming thus a sentiment in which the instincts of flight and pugnacity are incorporated, have also become a protection in themselves—an amulet to ward off danger.
What reason, it may be asked, is there for believing that the sexual instinct really exists in this case, and is only repressed or dissociated? I may not state all the reasons; it is sufficient to say that the evidence is to be found in dreams. The large number of sexual dreams which the subject has experienced, many of them accompanied by realistic sexual manifestations and not symbolic only, leave no doubt of this fact.[[235]]
Conflicts with subconscious sentiments. Thus far we have been considering conflicts between sentiments and emotional processes which have been in the full light of consciousness. But in previous lectures we have seen that ideas with strong emotional tones may be dissociated and function below the threshold of consciousness as coconscious processes. It is theoretically possible, therefore, that conflicts might arise between a dissociated coconscious sentiment and one that is antagonistic to it in consciousness. To appreciate this theoretical condition let me point out that there is one important difference between the ultimate consequences of the repression of an instinct and of a sentiment. If an instinct is repressed (it being only an innate disposition) it ceases to be an active factor in the functioning organism. It is inhibited. A stimulus that ordinarily suffices to excite it fails to do so, and it may respond only to an extraordinarily powerful stimulus, or perhaps none will awaken it. Thus abstinence from food fails to awaken a sense of hunger in a person who has lost this instinct for any reason, even though appetizing food be placed before him.[[236]] Similarly anger, or fear, or tender emotion, or self-assertion, or disgust, in certain persons cannot be awakened excepting by very unusual stimuli. In other words, the psycho-physiological reflex is completely or relatively in abeyance just as much so as is an organic reflex (e. g., the knee-jerk) which has been inhibited. Normally, of course, it is rare for an instinct to be absolutely inhibited excepting temporarily, as has been explained, during a conflict with another instinct. In certain pathological conditions (e. g., dissociated personality), almost any instinct may be persistently inhibited. In normal conditions there is, however, one exception, namely the sexual instinct, which, as we have seen from instances cited, may be inhibited during long periods of time. In women this inhibition is common and is effected, as I believe, by the subtle and insensible influence of the environment of the child and by social education, in other words, by the social taboo. Wherever inhibition occurs observation would seem to show that the psycho-physiological function has ceased to take part in the functioning organism.
With sentiments, however, the case stands differently. A sentiment, being an idea about which a system of emotional dispositions has been organized, when repressed by conflict, or when simply out of mind, whether capable of reproduction as memory or not, may, like all ideas, still be conserved, as we have seen, as an unconscious neurogram. As we have also seen, so long as it is conserved it is still a part of the personality. Even though repressed it is not necessarily absolutely inhibited but may be simply dissociated and then be able to take on dissociated subconscious activity. As a subconscious process the idea continues still organized with its emotional dispositions, and the conative forces of these, under certain conditions, may continue striving to give expression to the idea. We have already become familiar with one phenomenon of this striving, namely, the emerging into consciousness of the emotional element of the sentiment while the idea remains subconscious, thus producing an unaccountable fear or joy, feelings of pleasure or pain, etc. (p. 381).
1. This being so, it having been determined that under certain conditions any conserved experience may become activated as a dissociated subconscious process, it is theoretically quite possible that the impulses of an activated subconscious sentiment might come into conflict with the impulses of a conscious process—the two being antagonistic. The resulting phenomena might be the same as when both factors to the contest are in consciousness. In such a conflict if the impulsive force of the subconscious sentiment is the stronger the conscious ideas, sentiments, and feelings—in short, the conscious process—would be repressed, and vice versa. Or if the subconscious sentiment got the worst of the conflict and could not repress the conscious process, the former, being dissociated and an independent “automatic” process, might theoretically induce various other phenomena in the effort to fulfil its aim. If it could not directly overcome the impulses of the conscious process it might circumvent the latter by inducing mental and physiological disturbances which would indirectly prevent the conscious impulses from fulfilling their aim; e. g., inhibition of the will, dissociation or total inhibition of consciousness[consciousness], amnesia for particular memories, motor phenomena interfering with normal activity, etc. The subconscious sentiment engaging in such a conflict could be excited to activity by any associative antagonistic idea in consciousness. It should be noted that the subject being entirely unaware of the subconscious process would not know the cause of the resulting phenomena.
2. Now, in fact, such hypothetical conflicts and phenomena are actually observed in very neat and precise form under experimental conditions, particularly in pathological or quasi-pathological subjects. These conditions are particularly instructive as they allow us to clearly recognize the subconscious character of the conflicting process and detect the exact sentiment concerned therein.
The following experiment illustrative of such a conflict between a conscious and subconscious process I have repeated many times in one subject with the same resulting phenomenon. It has been demonstrated on several occasions to psychologists and others. On the first occasion when the phenomenon was observed it was entirely spontaneous and unexpected as also has since been frequently the case.
B. C. A. in one phase of alternating personality (B) was asked to mention a certain complex of ideas which was known to have been organized about a distressing “sentiment” in another phase (C) causing considerable unhappiness. This sentiment included a strong emotion of pride in consequence of which she had in the C phase intense objections to revealing these ideas. As she herself said, she “would have gone to the stake first.” Phase B has no such sentiment, but on the contrary the ideas in question were only amusing to her.[[237]] In phase B, therefore, she not only had no objection to revealing the sentiment distressing to C but desired for therapeutic reasons to do so. In accordance with this difference of sentiments the difference in the attitude of mind in the two phases toward the same experience was quite striking. The impulse in the one was to conceal the experiences and sentiment, in the other to divulge them.
Now, in reply to an interrogatory as to what was distressing in the C phase, B begins to mention the sentiment. At once, and to her astonishment, her lips and tongue are tied by painful spasms involving, also, the throat muscles. She becomes dumb, unable to overcome the resistance. She struggles in vain to speak. When she gives up the struggle to pronounce the forbidden words she speaks with ease on other subjects saying “something prevented me from speaking.” Each time that she endeavors to turn State’s evidence and to peach on herself, the same struggle is repeated. When she persists in her effort, using all her will-power, the effect of the conflicting force extends to consciousness. Her thoughts become first confused, then obliterated, and she falls back in her seat limp, paralyzed, and apparently unconscious. The thoughts to which she strove to give expression have disappeared. She now cannot even will to speak.
But she is not really unconscious, it is only another phase; there is only a dissociation or inhibition of the consciousness comprising the system of ideas making up the B phase and an awakening of another restricted system. When automatic writing is tried, it is found that a limited field of consciousness is present in which are to be found the ideas which opposed the resistance. A precise statement of the opposing factors (volition) which offered the resistance and brought about the conflict, the spasm of the vocal apparatus, and finally inhibition or dissociation of consciousness, is obtained from this dissociated restricted field.[[238]]
This phenomenon carries its own interpretation on its face and cannot be doubted. Certain sentiments, for the moment dormant and outside the focus of awareness of the subject, are “struck” or stimulated by memories within that focus. The conative force of the conscious wishes to which the subject seeks to give expression meets with the resistance of a similar and more powerful force from the previously dormant sentiment. The latter carries itself to fulfilment and controls the vocal apparatus at first, and then, finding itself likely to be overcome by the will-power of the personality, annihilates the latter by the inhibition and dissociation of consciousness.
Various forms of the same phenomenon of conflict with subconscious processes I have experimentally demonstrated in Miss B. and O. N. Spontaneous manifestations of the same have also been frequently observed in all three subjects. In the published account of Miss B.[[239]] numerous examples are given. I will merely refer to the attacks of aboulia, the dissociations of consciousness and inhibition of thought, and of speech resulting in stuttering and dumbness, the inhibition of motor activity, the induction of systematized anesthesia and alexia, etc. In the prolonged study of the case I was the witness, I was going to say, of innumerable exhibitions of such manifestations, and the book is replete with examples of conflicts between opposing mental processes. B. C. A. in her account, “My Life as a Dissociated Personality,”[[240]] has described similar spontaneous phenomena. It is worth noting in this connection that the commonplace phenomena of systematized anesthesia (negative hallucinations) may be induced by conflict with a subconscious process motivated by strong emotion. Thus Miss B. in one of her phases could not see the writing on a sheet of paper which appeared blank to her; on another occasion she could not see the printing of the pages of a French novel which she therefore took to be a blank book, nor could she see a bookcase containing French books.[[241]] The subconscious conflicting ideas were motivated by anger in the one case and jealousy in the other. That the conflicting ideas in this case were elements synthesized in a large dissociated system or subconscious self in no way affects the principle, which is that of conflict between processes. The conflicting process in such conditions is a more complex one, that is all. Undoubtedly the systematized anesthesia, so easily induced by hypnotic suggestion and which has been made the subject of much study, may be explained on the same principle, although the affective elements are not so obtrusive. The conflict is between the personal volition of the subject to see the marked playing-card, if that is the test object used in the experiment, and the suggested idea not to see it. The latter wins if the experiment is successful and inhibits the perception of the card—i. e., dissociates it from the focus of awareness. (The emotional tones involved are obscure; possibly they are curiosity on the one hand vs. self-subjection on the other.)
The unconscious resistance to suggestion is probably of the same nature. Every one knows that it is difficult to hypnotize a person who resists the suggestion. This resistance may come from a counter auto-suggestion which may be entirely involuntary, perhaps a conviction on the part of the subject that she cannot be hypnotized, or an unwillingness to be—i.e., desire not to be hypnotized or fear. The same is true of waking a person from hypnosis. In other words, an antagonistic preparedness of the mind blocks involuntarily the suggestion. A very pretty illustration is the following: H. O. discovered that she could easily and rapidly hypnotize herself by simply passing her own fingers over her eyelids, but she could not wake herself out of hypnosis. She then discovered that, if she first gave herself the suggestion that she would wake when she desired, she could quickly do so. Likewise, if she suggested to herself that she could not hypnotize herself the customary procedure was without effect. Though this observation is a common phenomenon the rapidity and ease with which the phenomenon was demonstrated were as striking as it was amusing to watch her struggle to awake when the preparatory anticipatory autosuggestion had not been given.
In O. N. more complicated phenomena induced by conflicts with subconscious complexes have been equally precise and striking. In this subject I find, as the result of repeated observations, that, in order that a suggestion, that is antagonistic to a preexisting attitude of mind possessing a strong feeling tone, shall not be resisted in hypnosis, it must be first formally accepted by the personality before hypnosis is induced. If this viewpoint is not preformed, after hypnosis is induced the blocking attitude cannot be altered. Practically this means that the subject shall bring into consciousness and disclose ideas with which the intended suggestion will conflict and shall modify them voluntarily. This she does by first candidly accepting a new point of view, and then, secondly, by a technical procedure of her own, namely, by preparing her mind not to resist in hypnosis. This procedure, briefly stated and simplified, is as follows: she first says to herself, “I will ‘take out’ that [resisting] idea.” Then she arranges in her thoughts the ideas of acceptance which she will substitute. Then she puts herself into a state of abstraction (hypnosis) and suggests to herself that the resisting idea is taken out and that my intended suggestion shall be her viewpoint. Even then, sometimes, when the resisting idea is one harking back to a long past period of life and belonging to a pathologically organized “mood,” known as the “b mood” or state, the acceptance of the suggestion may be ineffectual. Under these circumstances and when the hypnotic dissociation is carried too far, so that the hypnotic state is reduced to the “b mood,” the previously auto-suggested acceptance of the idea by the patient is thereby ostracized from the hypnotic field and is unable to play its part and have effect. So much by way of explanation. Now when the precaution has not been taken to see that any resisting idea has been “taken out” and when the intended suggestion has not been accepted, one of the following phenomena is observed: (1) the hypnotic personality when the suggestion is given becomes “automatically” and unconsciously restless, endeavors, without knowing why, to avoid listening, and to push me away, shifting her attitude and struggling to withdraw herself from contact or proximity—all the time the face expressing hostility and disapproval in its features; or (2) complete obnubilation of consciousness supervenes so that the suggestions are not heard; or (3) the subject suddenly wakes up. The last frequently happens as often as the suggestion is repeated; and yet in hypnosis (and also, of course, when awake), the subject is unaware of what causes the resistance and the resulting phenomena. But if now the subject is warned of what has occurred and accepts the suggestion by the procedure mentioned (unless the “b mood” I have mentioned recurs), the resistance and other phenomena at once cease and the suggestion takes effect. Thus in this case the conflicting ideas can always be precisely determined and the conditions of the experiment arranged at will and the results controlled. It is obvious that all three phenomena are different modes by which the subconscious idea resists the suggested idea and accomplishes its aim.
3. In entire accordance with the experimental results are certain pathological disturbances which from time to time interrupt the course of everyday life of this subject, O. N. These disturbances consist of one or more of the following: a dissociative state in which the pathological “b mood” is dominant; a lethargic state; twilight state; complete repression of certain normal sentiments and instincts; complete alteration of previously established points of view; morbid self-reproach; nervousness, restlessness, agitation; anger at opposition; indecision of thought, etc. Now, whenever such phenomena recur, with practical certainty, they can always be traced by the use of technical methods to a conflict with a turbulent sentiment (in which strong emotional tones are incorporated) previously lying dormant in the unconscious. Sometimes the turbulent sentiment can be definitely traced to childhood’s experiences. Very often it has been intentionally formed and put into her mind by the subject herself for the very purpose of inducing the repression of other sentiments, to which for one reason or another for the time being she objects, and of changing her habitual point of view. Her method of artificially accomplishing this result is exceedingly instructive. It is similar to the auto-suggestive process I have described in connection with the hypnotic experiments. Having first prearranged her psychological plan, she proceeds to put herself into abstraction and to “take out”, as she calls it, her previous sentiment (or instinct) and substitute an antagonistic sentiment. When she comes to herself out of abstraction, the previously objected to sentiment has completely vanished. If it is one concerning a person or mode of life, she becomes completely indifferent to that person or mode of life as if previously no sentiment had existed. If an intimate friend, he becomes only an acquaintance toward whom she has entirely new feelings corresponding to the new sentiment; if a physician, nothing that he says has influence with her, her new feeling, we will say, being that of resentment; if a mode of life, she has lost all interest in that mode and is governed by an interest in a new mode. Even physiological bodily instincts have been in this way suppressed. She has indulged this psychological habit for years. Again and again when she has exhibited these, and still other, phenomena, I have been able to discover their origin in this auto-suggestive procedure.
Some of the other phenomena I have just mentioned are more likely to be traced to autochthonous conflicts between everyday ideas—dissatisfactions with actual conditions of life, and wishes for other conditions, unwillingness to forego the fulfilment of certain wishes and accept the necessary conditions as they exist, etc. The natural consequence is restlessness, agitation, anger, indecision, etc. The dissociation of personality, with the outcropping of the “b mood,” follows—a conflict due to the excitation of certain childhood complexes, conserved in the unconscious and embracing sentiments in which are incorporated the instinct of self-subjection or abasement. This “b mood” is a study in itself. The self-reproaches are, I believe, also traceable to this instinct.
Conflicts may even occur between two processes, both of which are subconscious and therefore outside of the awareness of the subject. Thus, in B. C. A. I have frequently observed the following: while the right hand has been engaged in automatic writing, the left hand, motivated by a subconscious sentiment antagonistic to the subconscious ideas performing the writing, has seized the pencil, broken it, or thrown it across the room. The two conflicting systems of thought, each with its own sentiments and wishes, have been made to disclose themselves and exhibit their antitheses and antipathies.
The principle of emotional conflict and the phenomena we have outlined enable us to understand the mechanism of prolonged reaction time and blocking of thought observed in the so-called “word association tests.” These tests involve too large a subject for us to enter upon them here. Let it suffice to say that when a test word strikes an emotional complex the response of the subject by an associated word may be delayed or completely blocked. The emotional impulse which inhibits the response may come from an awakened conscious or subconscious memory.
The psychogalvanic reaction as physical evidence of actual subconscious emotional discharge.—This reaction may be also used to demonstrate that subconscious processes may actually give forth emotional impulses without the ideas of those processes entering the personal consciousness.
1. I may be permitted to cite here some experiments,[[242]] which I made with Dr. Frederick Peterson, as they leave the minimum of latitude for interpretation and come as close as possible to the demonstration of emotional discharges from processes entirely outside of awareness. Such a demonstration is important for the theory of subconscious conflicts.
The experiments were undertaken in a case of multiple personality (B. C. A.) with a view to obtaining the galvanic phenomenon from coconscious states. This case offered an exceptional opportunity to determine whether the galvanic reaction could be obtained in one personality from the dissociated complexes deposited by the experiences of the second alternating personality for which there was complete amnesia on the part of the first. These dissociated experiences, of course, had never entered the awareness of the personality tested, who, therefore, necessarily could not possibly recall them to memory. With the information furnished by the second personality, it was easy to arrange test words associated with the emotional ideas of the experiences belonging to this personality and unknown to the one tested.
Similarly it was possible to test whether galvanic reaction could be obtained from complexes—from subconscious complexes—the residua of forgotten dreams, as in this case the dreams were not remembered on waking. An account of the dreams could be obtained in hypnosis. The dreams were therefore simply dissociated.
Again we could test the possibility of obtaining reactions from subconscious perceptions and thoughts which had never arisen into awareness. The required information concerning these perceptions and thoughts could be obtained in this case in hypnosis.
Now we found that test words which expressed the emotional ideas belonging to a forgotten dream gave, in spite of the amnesia, very marked rises in the galvanic curve. The same was true of the test words referring to dissociated experiences belonging to the alternating personality for which the tested personality had amnesia, and of the subconscious perceptions. For instance (as an example of the latter), the word lorgnette, referring to a subconscious perception of a stranger unnoticed by the conscious personality, gave a very lively reaction.
Further, pin pricks, which could not be consciously perceived owing to the anesthesia of the skin, gave strong reactions.
Now here in the first two sets of observations were emotional effects apparently obtained from what were very precise complexes which were definitely underlying, in that they never had been experienced by the personality tested and therefore could not come from memories, or from associations of which this personality was aware. They could only come from the residua of a personality which had experienced them and which was now “underlying.” That these experiences had been conserved is shown by the recovery of them in a hypnotic state, and by their being remembered by the secondary personality. Even the pin pricks, which were not felt on account of the anesthesia, gave reactions. It could be logically inferred, therefore, that the galvanic reaction was due to the activity of subconscious complexes, using the term in the narrow and restricted sense of conserved residua without conscious equivalents. But the conditions were more complicated than I have described. There was in this case a veritable coconscious personality, a split-off, well-organized system of conscious states synthesized into a personal consciousness—two foci of self-consciousness. Now the coconscious personality with its large system of thoughts had full memory of all these amnesic experiences; it remembered the dreams and the experiences of the second personality, and perceived the pin pricks. Hence we concluded that the galvanic phenomena were obtained from the memory and perceptions of this coconscious personality.
This demonstration of an actual physical discharge is proof positive that an emotional process can function subconsciously. This being so, it only needs this discharge to come into conflict with some other process, conscious or subconscious, for one or other phenomenon of conflict to be manifested.
2. This psycho-galvanic phenomenon may be correlated with those phenomena which we have already studied (p. [381]) wherein the emotional element of the process alone rises into consciousness. The former phenomenon is therefore the manifestation of the efferent and the latter of the central part of the activated emotional disposition. The former supports the interpretation of various clinical motor phenomena as being the efferent manifestations of purely subconscious emotional processes. I refer to hysterical tics, spasms, contractures, etc. The latter phenomenon we have had frequent occasion to refer to. You will remember, for instance, that in the case of Miss B. on numerous occasions it was observed that emotion, particularly of fear, swept over the conscious personality without apparent cause. This emotion could be traced to specific dissociated and coconscious ideas. Likewise in B. C. A., states of anxiety or depression could be related to specific coconscious ideas which, having been shunted out of the field of consciousness, continued their activity in a coconscious state. Janet, as might be expected of so accurate an observer, long ago described the same phenomenon—the invasion of the personal consciousness by the emotion belonging to a coconscious idea. “Isabella,” he writes, “presents constantly conditions which have the same character; we shall cite but one other in the interest of the study of dementia. For a week or so she has been gloomy and sad; she hides and will not speak to anyone. We have trouble in getting a few words from her, and these she says very low, casting her eyes down: ‘I am not worthy to speak with other people.... I am very much ashamed, I have a crushing load on my mind like a terrible gnawing remorse....’—‘A remorse about what?’—‘Ah! that’s just it. I am trying to find it out day and night. What is it that I could have done last week? for before I was not thus. Tell me candidly, did I do something very bad last week?’ This time, as will be seen, the question is no longer about an act, but about a feeling, a general emotional state which she interprets as remorse; she is equally incapable of understanding and expressing the fixed idea which determines this feeling. If you divert the subject’s attention, you can obtain the automatic writing, and you will see that the hand of the patient constantly writes the same name, that of Isabella’s sister who died a short time ago. During the attacks and the somnambulic sleep we establish a very complicated dream in which this poor young girl thinks she murdered her sister. That is quite a common delirium, you will say; perhaps so, but for a hysteric it presents itself in a rather curious manner. She suffers only from its rebound, experiences only the emotional side of it; of the delirium itself she is wholly ignorant; the latter remains subconscious.”...
“It will be seen by this last example that, in some cases, a small portion of the fixed idea may be conscious. Isabella feels that she is troubled by some remorse, she knows not what. It thus frequently happens that hystericals, during their normal waking time, complain of a certain mental attitude, so much so that they partly look as if obsessed. Celestine experiences thus feelings of anger which she cannot explain.”[[243]]
As might be expected intense conflicts may have wide-reaching consequences and lead to the development of pathological conditions. Indeed, in the latter we find the most clear-cut exemplars of repression (dissociation) and other phenomena produced by conflict. I shall point out in later lectures[[244]] how in a specific case intense religious sentiments completely repressed their antagonistic instincts and eventuated in dissociation of (multiple) personality (Miss B.) Likewise with B. C. A., as I interpret the phenomena, the dissociation of personality resulted from a conflict between wishes that could not be fulfilled and sentiments of duty, respect, etc. We shall see later the significance of this principle for the understanding of other pathological states.
[220]. ... “Every instinctive process has the three aspects of all mental processes, the cognitive, the affective, and the conative. Now, the innate psychophysical disposition, which is an instinct, may be regarded as consisting of three corresponding parts, an afferent, a central, and a motor or efferent part, whose activities are the cognitive, the affective, and the conative features respectively of the total instinctive process. The afferent or receptive part of the total disposition is some organized group of nervous elements or neurones that is specially adapted to receive and to elaborate the impulses initiated in the sense-organ by the native object of the instinct; its constitution and activities determine the sensory content of the psychophysical process. From the afferent part the excitement spreads over to the central part of the disposition; the constitution of this part determines in the main the distribution of the nervous impulses, especially the impulses that descend to modify the working of the visceral organs, the heart, lungs, blood vessels, glands, etc., in the manner required for the most effective excitation of the instinctive action; the nervous activities of this central part are the correlates of the affective or emotional aspect or feature of the total physical process. The excitement of the efferent or motor part reaches it by the way of the central part; its construction determines the distribution of impulses to the muscles of the skeletal system by which the instinctive action is effected, and its nervous activities are the correlates of the conative element of the physical process, of the felt impulse to action.” William McDougall. An introduction to Social Psychology, p. 32.
[221]. Social Psychology, p. 44.
[222]. Ibid, p. 159.
[223]. Not included in this volume.
[224]. Personally communicated.
[225]. This theory of the part played by the sensory accompaniments of visceral activity I would suggest as a substitute for the James-Lange theory.
[226]. Hilton: Rest and Pain.
[227]. Note analogues in Sherrington’s mechanism of the spinal reflexes.
[228]. I follow in the main McDougall’s classification as sufficiently adequate and accurate for our purposes.
[229]. In fact, this was successfully done.
[230]. For purposes of simplification I leave aside feelings of pleasure and pain, excitement and depression, for though their main functions may be only to guide or shape the actions prompted by the instincts, as McDougall affirms, still I think there is sound reason to believe that feelings also have conative force and are coöperative impulsive factors.
[231]. McDougall has proposed the ingenious theory that that which we understand, properly speaking, by “will” is a complex form of conation issuing from a particular sentiment, viz., the complexly organized sentiment of self (“self-regarding sentiment”). The behavior immediately determined by the primitive instincts and other sentiments cannot be classed as volition, but should be regarded as simple instinctive conation. When, therefore, the will reinforces a sentiment and determines conduct it is the self-regarding sentiment which provides the “volitional” impulse and is the controlling factor. If this theory should stand it would give a satisfactory solution of this difficult question. Perhaps it receives some support on the part of abnormal psychology in that certain observations seem to show, if I correctly interpret them, that self-consciousness is a complex capable of being dissociated like any idea or sentiment. I shall presently describe a quasi-pathological state which may be called depersonalization. In this state the “conscious intelligence” present is able to think and reason logically and sanely, is capable of good judgments, and has an unusually large field of memory, in short, is a very intelligent consciousness; nevertheless, it exhibits a very strange phenomenon: it has lost all consciousness of self; it has no sense of personality, of anything to which the term “I” can be applied. This sentiment seems to be absolutely dissociated in this state.
[232]. The repression of the sexual instinct and of sexual wishes plays the dominant rôle in the Freudian psychology. If a wish may be correctly defined psychologically as the impulsive force of a sentiment striving toward an end plus the pleasurable feeling resulting from the imagined attainment of that end, i.e., the imagined gratification of the impulse, then the repression of a wish belongs to the phenomena of repressed sentiments rather than of primitive instincts. This distinction, I think, is of some importance, as will appear when we consider subconscious sentiments.
[233]. In making use of suggestion for therapeutic purposes it is essential to construct one with strong emotional tones and pleasurable and exalting feelings for the purposes of increasing resistances to contrary impulses, and carrying the suggestion to fruition. This I believe to be one of the secrets of successful suggestive procedure. The construction of an effective suggestion is an art in itself and must be based on the psychological conditions existing in each case.
[234]. Of course this attitude is not to be viewed as an isolated event standing all alone by itself. It must be read like nearly all events of life in relation to a series of antecedent events. These, to her, had denoted indifference, and now on this crucial occasion formed the real setting and gave the offensive meaning to her spouse’s forgetfulness.
[235]. Notwithstanding the frequency with which asexuality is met with in women, I am strongly inclined to the opinion that the sexual instinct in the sex is never really absent, excepting, of course, in late life and in organic disease. No woman is born without it. When apparently absent it is only inhibited or dissociated by the subtle influences of the environment, education, conflicting sentiments, etc.
[236]. A distinction should be made between hunger and appetite. Food may excite appetite, although hunger has been appeased.
[237]. Note that the same idea forms different sentiments in different phases or moods, according to the emotions with which it is linked. In this case, in phase C, it is linked with mortification, self-abasement, possibly anger, pride, and feelings of pain and depression; in phase B, with joyful emotions and feelings of pleasure and excitement. Also note that the former sentiment, although out of mind at the time of the observation, is conserved in the unconscious.
[238]. At first the subject (B) had no anticipation or supposition that such a conflict would occur. Later she learned after repeated experiences to anticipate the probable consequences of trying to tell tales-out-of-school.
[239]. The Dissociation, see Index: “Subconscious ideas.”
[240]. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, October-November, 1908.
[241]. The Dissociation, p. 538.
[242]. Journal Abn. Psychol., June-July, 1908.
[243]. The Mental State of Hystericals, pp. 289-290.
[244]. Not included in this volume.
LECTURE XVI
GENERAL PHENOMENA RESULTING FROM EMOTIONAL CONFLICTS
The awakening of intense emotional impulses we have seen tends to intensify certain activities and to inhibit other conflicting ones. Further when that which is inhibited is a sentiment possessing an intense emotion the sentiment tends to become dissociated[[245]] from the personal consciousness and free to become by the force of its own emotional dispositions a subconscious process. As a consequence of these tendencies there may result a number of psycho-physiological conditions of personality with some of which we should become familiar. They are observable, as would be expected, in every-day life, and when highly accentuated become pathological phenomena. Let us now consider some of them in detail.
Contraction of the field of consciousness and of personality.—In every-day life intense emotion excludes from the field of awareness thoughts that are unrelated, antagonistic to and incompatible with the ideas exciting the emotion, and perceptions of the environment that ordinarily would enter awareness. The field of consciousness is thereby contracted and limited to thoughts excited by or associated with the emotion. Thus, for example, in the heat of anger the mind is dominated by the particular object or thought which gave rise to the anger, or by anger exciting associated ideas. Conflicting memories and correlated knowledge that would modify the point of view and judgment and mollify (inhibit) the anger are suppressed and cannot enter the focus of attention. Further, a person in such a state may not perceive many ocular, auditory, tactile, and other impressions coming from the environment; he may not see the people about him, hear what is said, or feel what is done to him, or only in an imperfect way. All these sensations are either actually inhibited or prevented from entering awareness (dissociated) by the conflicting conative force of the emotion. In other words there is a dissociation (or inhibition) of consciousness and consequent contraction of its field to certain emotional ideas.
To take a concrete example, you are playing a game of cards and with zest throw yourself into the game. Something happens to arouse your anger. At once there is a conflict: The impulsive force of your pugnacity instinct meets with the impulsive force of your play instinct and its pleasure feelings. If the former is the stronger, the latter with the ideas to which it is linked are inhibited, repressed, driven out of consciousness. The pleasure of play ceases and its impulses no longer determine your thoughts. Further, you forget the cards that have been played though you knew them well a moment before, you may forget your manners, become oblivious to social etiquette and the environment. You can no longer reason on the play of the cards; you forget your card knowledge. All these processes are inhibited, and consequently the field of consciousness and personality becomes contracted.
On the other hand, the emotion of anger dominating the mind, ideas associated with or which tend to carry your pugnacity instinct to fruition, arise and direct and determine your conduct. Habit reactions are likely to come automatically into play, and you break out into angry denunciatory speech, if that is your habit. I leave you to fill out the details of the picture for yourselves.
And yet, again through training in self-control, a self-regarding sentiment conflicting with the anger impulse may be awakened, and the latter in turn be dominated, repressed, inhibited.
In the case of an intense fear it is common observation that this contraction may reach a high degree. In the excitement of a railroad accident the frightened passenger does not feel the bruising and pain which he otherwise would suffer, nor hear the shrieks of his fellow passengers nor perceive but a small part of what is occurring about him, but driven only by the intensely motivating idea of escape from danger he struggles for safety. His field of consciousness is limited to the few ideas of danger, escape, and the means of safety. All else is dissociated by the conative force of the emotion and cannot enter the focus of attention. He could not philosophize on the accident if he would. In ordinary concentration of attention or absent-mindedness the same phenomenon of contraction of the field of consciousness occurs occasioned by interest; but with cessation of interest the field of awareness quickly widens. So in contraction of this field from emotion the normal is restored so soon as the emotion ceases.
When this same general contraction of the field of consciousness, effected by the repressing force of emotion, reaches a certain acme we have a pathological condition—the hysterical state. The field of consciousness is now occupied by the single dissociating idea or complex of ideas with its emotion that did the repressing—a condition of mono-ideism. All other conscious processes are inhibited or dissociated. When the complex is an intensely emotional one, its nervous energy, now unbridled, is free to discharge itself in many directions, perhaps producing convulsive phenomena of one kind or another.
To attribute these effects of emotion to repression from conflict is only to express the facts in different terms. But it would be often an over-emphasis to describe what takes place as a specific conflict between particular sentiments. It is often rather the discharge of a blind impulsive force in every direction which, like a blast of dynamite, suppresses or dissociates every other process which might come into consciousness and displace it.
Systematized dissociation.—Quite commonly the dissociated field, by whatever force isolated, instead of being general may be systematized. By this is meant that only certain perceptions, or groups or categories of ideas that have been organized into a system, or have associative relations, are prevented from entering the personal synthesis. In other respects the conscious processes may be normal. The simplest type is probably systematized anesthesia, exemplified in every-day life in anyone who fails to perceive his eye-glasses, or any other object he is in search of that is lying under his nose on the table before him; and by the post-hypnotic phenomenon exhibited by the subject who fails to perceive a marked playing card or to hear or see a given person, though he perceives all the other cards in the pack and everyone else in the room; and by the hysteric who likewise fails to perceive certain systematized sensations, such as the printing on a page which, itself, therefore appears blank. That which is dissociated in these examples is a comparatively very simple complex, but it may involve larger and larger groups of remembrances, perceptions, sentiments (with their emotions and feelings), settings, attitudes, instincts, and other innate dispositions, etc., organized into a system about the sentiment of self. Such groups and systems may, as we saw when studying the organization of complexes (Lecture IX), be dissociated in that they cease to take part in the functioning of the personality. The personality becomes thereby contracted.
1. The principle involved is this: When a specific idea or psycho-physiological function (memory, sensation, perception, instinct) is by any force dissociated, the exiled idea or function tends to carry with itself into seclusion other ideas and functions with which it is systematized. The dissociation is apt to involve much more than the particular psychological element in question in that it “robs” the personal consciousness of much else. I have already cited in a previous lecture (p. 318) examples of this principle. I need merely remind you of the observation with Miss B., where the systematized dissociation of auditory images pertaining to the experimenter carried with it the associated secondary visual images of him necessary for tactile perception of his hand. Similarly, in B. C. A., the general dissociation of tactile images carried with it the secondary visual images necessary for the visualization of her body. A large number of examples drawn from all kinds of dissociative phenomena might be given. I will content myself with mentioning two or three more: In automatic writing the dissociated muscular control of the hands usually robs the personal consciousness, so far as the hand is concerned, of all sensory perception, and in automatic speech the dissociation of the faculty of speech often robs the personal consciousness of the auditory perception of the subject’s own voice. In hysterics, the specific dissociation of one class of perceptions carries away others systematized with them. In systematized anesthesia it is often easy to recognize this fact. A good example of this is that recorded in the case of Miss B., who, believing she had lost her finger rings, not only could not be made to see or feel them, but also not even the ribbon on which they were hung round her neck, or to hear them click together, or to feel the tug of the ribbon when I pulled it.[[246]] The perceptions of these associated sensations were therefore also withdrawn. The same principle can be demonstrated by suggestion in suitable subjects. Thus, for example, I suggest to one of these subjects in hypnosis that she will forget an episode associated with a certain person named “August.” After waking she has amnesia not only for the episode but for the name of the person and for the word in its other meanings, e. g., the name of a calendar month. She cannot recall that a month intervenes between July and September.
In these examples the source of the dissociating force is not in every case obvious. But this need not concern us now. What I want to point out is that when the dissociation is the consequence of an emotional discharge the same principle frequently comes into play, the same phenomenon of systematization is of common occurrence. It may be recognized with considerable exactness when a conflict between sentiments has been artificially created. Thus the phenomenon, described in the last lecture (p. 476), of inhibition of sentiments by a self-suggested antagonistic sentiment, may equally well be cited in evidence of this principle. Similarly, O. N. suggested to herself a sentiment antagonistic to a specific sentiment which she previously entertained regarding a particular person. Not only was the latter sentiment dissociated but a number of other allied sentiments systematized around the same person were also incidentally and unintentionally repressed and withdrawn from consciousness, so much so that her whole point of view was altered.[[247]] (It was easy in hypnosis by the procedures already stated to synthesize the sentiments at will so as to drive out, with suggested antagonistic sentiments, the undesired ones. The change of viewpoint and feeling after waking from hypnosis was often quite dramatic.)
2. By this mechanism we can explain the dissociation of large systems of sentiments leaving a contracted personality—a mere extract of its former self—dissociated and distinguished from what it was by different sentiments, instincts and other innate dispositions.[[248]] The facts seem to show that the awakening of the emotional impulses of certain sentiments inhibits, not only those particular antagonistic sentiments with which the former are incompatible, but large systems of sentiments, and many instincts and other innate dispositions with which the inhibited sentiments are systematized. The contracted self may or may not be able to recall to memory the fact of having previously experienced the dissociated sentiments. But whether so or not the latter no longer functionally participate in the personality.
This mechanism, to be sure, is an interpretation but the facts are easily demonstrated. Minor types of such dissociations result in what we have described as “moods.” More extreme types are pathological and characterized as phases of personality.
3. The contrast of the sentiments in such moods and phases with the habitual sentiments having identically the same objects is striking. In other words the object is organized with an entirely different group of emotions (instincts). The subject’s sentiment of husband or wife or father or son no longer contains the emotions of love and reverence, etc.; but, perhaps, there are organized within it the emotions of anger, hatred, contempt, etc. A self-regarding sentiment of self-subjection with shame, “feelings” of inadequacy and depression may be substituted for self-assertion, pride, self-respect, etc. These clinical facts are matters of observation. B——n suffers from constantly recurring and very intense attacks of asthma which have certain characteristics which stamp it as an hysterical tic. In the attacks it is noticeable that her personality and disposition—normally amiable, gentle, and affectionate—undergo a change. The parental instinct and sentiments of affection for her family, of whom she is very fond, of modesty, of pride, of consideration for others, etc., disappear and are replaced by others of an opposite character. Fear, anger, and resentment are easily aroused, etc. B. C. A. in phase B of personality knew nothing of remorse, self-reproach, or despair which characterized the normal phase, and experienced only emotions and feelings of pleasure and happiness.[[249]]
Janet, with his customary accuracy in observing facts, has noted these changes, although I think in his attempt at interpretation he has not quite recognized the mechanism by which they are brought about. “With Renée,” this author remarks, when noting the facts, “we have gradually seen disappearing the taste for finery; her coquetry—vanity, even—disappeared. With others, the love of property is gone; they lose all that belongs to them and do not care. Bertha formerly had great timidity; she now wonders at the loss of it. She goes and comes at night; she looks at dead bones of which she was afraid in past years, and asks: ‘Why does all this make no impression on me now?’ Marie, especially, is very curious as to that. She takes no longer any interest in things or people. Overwhelmed with misfortunes, consequences of her malady, and, after having been in comfortable circumstances, reduced to extreme poverty, she does not perceive that her situation is serious. She loses money, when she has only a few pennies left; she mislays her clothing, can scarcely keep on the dress she is wearing and does not seem to trouble herself about it in the least. Yet we observe that she is still intelligent and might provide against her situation. She does so very little, and only wonders at her indifference. ‘Formerly I took care of my things; now I do not.’ There are some still more characteristic facts to be observed in this patient. Formerly she loved her husband and was even quite jealous about him. She was devoted to her two children. Since her illness she has gradually abandoned her children, who have been reared by her sisters, and she finally left her husband. For the last three years, instead of her former happy life, she leads about Paris the most miserable existence. Not once did she inquire about her husband or her children. She heard indirectly of the former’s death. ‘Strange!’ she said, ‘it does not affect me in the least; yet, I assure you, it does not make me happy, either ... I simply don’t care.’ ‘But if we were to tell you that your little Louis [it was her favorite child] is dead, too?’ ‘How do you suppose it can affect me? I have forgotten him!’”[[250]]
4. Janet, when interpreting such phenomena, attributes them to “psychological feebleness” in consequence of which the personality cannot synthesize more than a certain number of emotions and ideas to form the personal self-consciousness. It certainly cannot perform the synthesis involved in retaining certain formerly possessed sentiments, etc., but it is not because of feebleness. Many hysterics can synthesize quite as many psychological elements as a normal person, but not sentiments and emotions of a certain character, i.e., those which pertain to certain experiences, to certain systems of remembrances. M. Janet has quite correctly pointed out that, in spite of the apathy and lack of emotionality of hysterics in certain directions,—which, I would insist, in the last analysis means the absence of particular sentiments and instincts—in other directions these patients are “extremely excitable and susceptible of very exaggerated emotions,” which in turn means the retention of particular sentiments and instincts. These last dominate the personality. Here is the key to the enigma.
From this point of view, the effect of the impulsive force of the dominating emotions has been misinterpreted by M. Janet. These emotions are the causal factors in determining the apathy, i.e., absence of particular sentiments and instincts, and explain why they cannot be brought within the personal synthesis. If we bear in mind that emotion means discharge of force, an adequate explanation of such phenomena in a great many instances, at least, is to be found in the principle of conflict and dissociation. The conflict is between the impulsive forces of the emotions pertaining either to antagonistic instincts or to sentiments organized within different systems. With the excitation of emotion, instincts and sentiments which have opposing conative tendencies are inhibited, repressed, or dissociated, and with them the systems with which they are organized. The emotion does not so much cause “psychological feebleness” in consequence of which the personality cannot synthesize sentiments, as it inhibits and dissociates antagonistic sentiments, etc., which consequently cannot be synthesized. The result you may call “feebleness” if you like.
Hence it is that hysterics present the seeming paradox of having, as M. Janet observed, “in reality fewer emotions than is generally thought and [in] that their principal character is here, as it is always, a diminution of psychological phenomena. These patients are in general very indifferent, at least to all that is not directly connected with a small number of fixed ideas.” According to the view which we are maintaining, the “fewer emotions” are due to the dissociation of many sentiments and instincts by the dominating emotional complex.
5. Let us not forget that this explanation is a matter of interpretation, but the interpretation comports with what is common observation of what happens when a new emotion which is incompatible with an existing emotion (fear—anger) is excited. In the case of Miss B., the alternation of the personality coincident with the excitation of an emotion occurred with such frequency, not to say with regularity, that there seemed to be no room to doubt the causal factor and the mechanism.[[251]] Sometimes the dissociation resulted in the formation of new phases of personality in which Miss B. reverted to a past epoch of time in which she lived once more, the experiences of all later epochs being dissociated; sometimes in phases with a very contracted field of consciousness without orientation in time or place and with little knowledge of self or environment; sometimes—and in these instances the dissociation of organized systems could most clearly be recognized—in the substitution of one of the already established phases (BI, BIV, or BIII) for another. It is not always easy without intensive study, to determine the exact sentiment or instinct which is responsible for the dissociation, although the actual occurrence of the emotional state just preceding the development of the phenomenon is obtrusively obvious. “At various times as a result of emotionally disintegrating circumstances” at least eight different phases were observed in addition to the three regularly recurrent phases.[[252]]
In B. C. A. the gradual organization through the circumstances of life of a group of “rebellious” ideas, in which the dominating sentiments and instincts were intensely antagonistic to those previously peculiar to the subject, could be clearly determined. So antagonistic was this group that it was known as the rebellious complex but termed B complex for convenience. It became by successive accretions a large system and phase of personality. The details are too extensive to enter into at this time; suffice it to say that as the result of what is called an “emotional shock” the B system came into being. This interpreted means that the shock was really the excitation of the rebellious sentiments and other emotions belonging to the B system; there was a conflict; the habitual sentiments and the system to which they belonged were inhibited and replaced by the former (B). Later the displaced sentiments and their corresponding A system were awakened, the emotions giving rise to another shock, a conflict, and the B system, in turn, was inhibited. And so it could be recognized that alternations of systems could be evoked by the alternate excitation of sentiments and instincts—or complexes, if you prefer the term—pertaining to each.
6. This summary of the phenomena of conflict inducing dissociation of personality would be incomplete if the dissociations effected by entirely subconscious processes were not mentioned. These can be very neatly studied with coconscious personalities, as such personalities can give very precise information of the mode by which the displacement of the primary personality is effected. In the cases of Miss B. and B. C. A. “Sally” and “B,” respectively, have done this. It appears, according to this testimony, that coconscious “willing” or strong conation, even simply a wish to inhibit the principal consciousness, would effect that result. Thus, for instance, B testified: “When A is present I can ‘come’ voluntarily by willing, i.e., blot A out and then I ‘come.’... By willing I mean I would say to A: ‘... Go away’: ‘Get out of the way’: ‘Let me come: I will come,’ and then A disappeared. She was gone and I was there. It was almost instantaneous.... Sometimes the wish to change would blot out A without actual willing.”
In the case of Miss B. similar testimony of the effect of coconscious willing and wishes was obtained.
When the coconscious wishes, sentiments, etc., are not synthesized into a large self-conscious system (i.e., coconscious personality) which can give direct testimony as to the subconscious[subconscious] conflicts, the former and the process which they incite must be inferred from known antecedent factors and the observed phenomena of inhibition or dissociation. That general and systematized dissociation are phenomena which can be, and frequently are, induced by the conative force of purely subconscious processes, in view of the multiform data offered by hysterics can be open to no manner of doubt. The process may be also formulated in terms of conflict.
Laws governing the lines of cleavage of personality.—In systematized dissociation there is a cleavage between certain organized systems of experiences and functions and the remainder of the personality. The contracted personality is consequently shorn of much. But we understand only very incompletely the laws which determine the direction of the line of cleavage and the consequent extent of the dissociated field. Unquestionably this follows the law of organization of complexes in a general way, but not wholly so. For instance, it is impossible by this law or by any known mechanism to explain the anesthesia which sometimes, apparently spontaneously, appears in certain hypnotic states. A given subject, e. g., B. C. A., is simply hypnotized by suggestion and successively falls into two different states. In one state the subject is found to be completely anesthetic and in the other normally esthetic. The subject is one and the same and the dissociating suggestion, which is the same in each case, contains nothing specifically related to sensation; and yet the line of cleavage is within the field of sensation in the one case and without it in the other; i.e., that which is dissociated includes the sensory field in the one state and not in the other. Similarly when the disaggregation of personality is brought about by the force of a conflicting emotion, the resulting hysterical state or dissociated personality may be robbed of certain sensory or motor functions, although these functions are not as far as we can see logically related to the emotion or the ideas coupled with it. Thus a person receives an emotional shock and develops a one-sided anesthesia and paralysis—a very common phenomenon. Louis Vivé used to pass into one state in which he had left hemiplegia and into another in which he had right hemiplegia, another with paraplegia. Each state had its own systematized memories, but why each had its own and different motor and sensory dissociations cannot be explained. In Miss B. the dissociation which resulted in the formation of the secondary personality, Sally, withdrew, without apparent rhyme or reason, the whole general field of sensations so that Sally was completely anesthetic.[[253]] The sensory functions seemed to be wantonly ejected along with the repressed complexes of ideas. Per contra, by the same process which results in dissociation, lost functions are often paradoxically synthesized. Mrs. E. B. and Mrs. R., anesthetic when “awake,” are found to be normally esthetic in hypnosis; i.e., the sensory functions are spontaneously synthesized with the hypnotic personality. In other words, in hypnosis the personal synthesis is in this respect more normal than in the “waking” state.
Again, when amnesia results it may cover a past epoch—retrograde amnesia—without obvious reason for the chronological line of cleavage. In short the suppression by dissociation of a specific psychological element—remembrance, perception, sentiment, etc.—not only tends to rob the personality of a whole psychological system in which it is organized but of other faculties, the relation of which to the specifically dissociated element is obscure. It seems as if the dissociation sometimes followed physiological as well as psychological lines.[[254]] It is in accordance with this principle that instincts and sentiments which are not immediately concerned in the specific conflict nor antagonistic to the dissociating emotion are often suppressed. Thus it is that hysterics, as we have seen by examples, have lost so many emotions (instincts) and the sentiments involving them, though they are so excitable to the emotions that are retained. In the case of B. C. A. the secondary personality B, the resultant (as I interpret the case) of the conflict between the play instinct and sentiments of duty, responsibility, etc., lost the parental instinct with the emotion of tender feeling (McDougall) and that of fear, with their corresponding sentiments. She was shockingly devoid of filial and maternal love and, indeed, of affection, in the true sense, for her friends. Likewise Sally (in the case of Miss B.), also the product of conflict between the impulses of the play instinct and those of the religious emotions, was entirely devoid of fear, of the sexual, and of certain other instincts not antagonistic to the dominating play instinct. She had lost also a great many, if not all, sentiments involving the tender feeling. As in the examples given of dissociation of motor, sensory, and other functions, the dissociative line of cleavage had excluded more than was engaged in the conflict. Of course, there always must be some reason for the direction taken by any line of cleavage, following the application of force, whether the fracture be of a psycho-physiological organism or of a piece of china; but when the conditions are as complex as they are in the human organism their determination becomes a difficult problem. When we come to study multiple personality we shall see that the suppression of instincts plays an important rôle.
Amnesia.—It is a general rule that when a person passes from a condition of extreme dissociation to the normal state there is a tendency for amnesia to supervene for the previous dissociated state (multiple personalities, epileptic and hysterical fugues, hypnotic and dream states, etc.). Likewise in everyday life it frequently happens, when the dissociation effected by emotion results in an extremely retracted field of consciousness, that, after this emotional state has subsided and the normal state has been restored, memory for the excited retracted state, including the actions performed, is abolished or impaired. Even criminal acts committed in highly emotional states (anger, “brain storms,” etc.) may be forgotten afterwards. In other words, in the normal state there is in turn a dissociation of the residua of the excited state. The experiences of this latter state are not lost, however, but only dissociated in that they cannot be synthesized with the personal consciousness and thereby reproduced as memory. That they may be still conserved as neurographic residua is shown in those cases suitable for experimental investigation where they can be reproduced by artificial devices (hypnotism, abstraction, etc.).
Thus B. C. A. could not recall a certain emotional experience although it made a tremendous impression upon her, disrupted her personality, and induced her illness. In other respects her memory was normal. Janet has described this amnesia following emotional shocks, notably in the classical case of Mme. D.
1. On first thought it seems strange that a person cannot remember such an important experience as that, for example, of B. C. A., when for all else the memory is normal. That this experience had awakened conflicting ideas and intense, blazing emotions with great retraction of the field of consciousness of the moment is shown by the history. Later there was found to be a hiatus in the memory, the amnesia beginning and ending sharply at particular points, shortly before and shortly after this experience. In other words, the extremely dissociated and retracted emotional field could not be synthesized with the personal consciousness or, one might say, with the sentiment of self. In hypnosis, however, this could be done and the memory recovered. Freud has proposed an ingenious theory involving a particular mechanism by which such amnesic effects are produced. According to this theory the dissociated experience cannot be recalled because it is so painful that it cannot be tolerated by consciousness; i.e., attempted emergence as memory meets with the resistance of conflicting subconscious thoughts, acting as a censor or guardian, and the experience is repressed and prevented from entering consciousness. (It would be, perhaps, within the scope of this theory to say that the impulsive force of the conflicting sentiments (involving pride and self-respect and the instinct of anger) awakened at the moment of the experience continued more or less subconsciously to repress the memory of the whole experience.)
2. If expressed in the following form I think the theory would equally well explain such amnesias, be in conformity with certain known hypnotic phenomena and, perhaps, be more acceptable: An experienced desire not to face, or think of, i.e., to recall to memory, a certain painful experience is conserved in the usual way. When an attempt is made to recall the episode this desire becomes an active subconscious process and inhibits the memory process. The analogue of this we have in posthypnotic amnesia induced by suggestion. In the hypnotic state the suggestion is given that the subject after waking shall have forgotten a certain experience, a name, or an episode. After waking the conative force[[255]] of the suggested idea, functioning entirely subconsciously (as there is complete forgetfulness for the hypnotic state), inhibits the memory of the test experience in that there is found to be amnesia for the latter. One may say there has been a subconscious conflict followed by inhibition of one of the belligerents. That antecedent thoughts of the individual can likewise become activated as subconscious processes and come into conflict with other processes and inhibit them, thus preventing them from becoming conscious, we have already seen. The antagonism of the motives in the two processes is often obvious. Numerous examples of inhibitions (induced by conflicts with subconscious ideas, emotions, and conations) of mental processes which could afterwards be recalled to memory in a secondary state of personality have been recorded in the case of Miss B.[[256]] Likewise in B. C. A. similar phenomena were testified to as due to subconscious conflicts.[[257]] There would seem to be no question therefore of either the occurrence of subconscious conflicts or their efficiency in producing amnesia.
3. However all this may be, there is no need for us now to enter into the question of mechanisms. Certain it is, though, that we often forget what we want to forget, which means memories that are unpleasant; and certain types of pathological amnesia answer to the Freudian mechanism or some modification of it. Certain amnesias undoubtedly follow deliberate wishes to put certain experiences out of mind, just as they follow hypnotic suggestions that they shall be forgotten. A very neat example is that of the observation previously given (Lecture III, p. [74]) of the subject who, in a moment of despair and resentment against criticism, expressed a wish to forget her own marriage name, and lo! and behold! on waking the next day she found she could not recall it. But amnesias of this kind differ in an important respect from the classical amnesias of hysteria. In the latter variety the dissociation is so extensive that reproduction cannot be effected by any associated idea of the personal consciousness; for reproduction another state of consciousness (hypnosis, alteration of personality, etc.) with which the forgotten experience is synthesized must be obtained or the subconscious must be tapped. In the former variety although the reproduction cannot be effected through an idea with which it stands in affectively painful association, it can be by some other indifferent idea or complex with which it is systematized. For instance, in the case of the phobia for the ringing of bells in a tower which we have studied, the original episode could not be recalled in association with the object of the phobia, notwithstanding that this object was an element in the episode, but it was readily recalled in association with contemporary events of the subject’s life. In the case of C. D., who had experienced a painful episode of fainting the same amnesic relations obtained.
4. On the other hand there are other forms of amnesia which the Freudian mechanism is totally inadequate to explain, or of which it offers only a partial explanation. I refer to the persisting amnesias of reproduction exemplified by much of the common forgetfulness of every-day life (often due to dis-interest); by the amnesias for whole systems of experiences in hypnotic states, in different phases of multiple personality, fugues, and deliria; by certain retrograde, general, and continuous amnesias of hysteria, alcoholic amnesia, etc. In some of these the amnesia is a dissociation of systems undoubtedly effected by the force of emotional impulses discharged by antagonistic complexes. This is to view the amnesia from its psychological aspect. But it may also be viewed from its correlated physiological aspect.
Let us note first that reproduction is a synthetic process which requires some sort of dynamic association between the neurogram underlying an idea present in the personal consciousness and the conserved neurograms of a past experience. From this view we may in the future find the explanation of amnesia (resulting from the dissociative effect of emotion) in the configuration of the physical paths of residua traveled and engraved by an emotional experience. The emotional discharge may have prevented an associative path of residua being established with the dissociated experience.[[258]]
5. Amnesia is too large a subject for us to go into its mechanisms at this time and we are not called upon to do so. It is enough to point out the different forms of amnesia which at times are the resultants of emotion. Inasmuch as experiences are organized in complexes and still further in large systems, which include settings (that give meaning to the particular experiences) and other associated sentiments, instincts and other innate dispositions, the dissociation of a single experience may involve a large complex of experiences, or a whole system of such, and result either in a simple amnesia alone or in an alteration of personality accompanied by amnesia. Such amnesias are generally classified as localized, systematized, general, or continuous.
6. The first, as it seems to me, is also in principle systematized, the distinction being clinical rather than psychological. By localized is meant an amnesia extending over an epoch of time. Thus, in the instance already cited, Miss B. suddenly found that she could not recall a single moment of a particular day, although previously she had remembered well the incidents, owing to a distressing experience the memory of which had tormented her during the whole day. The amnesia was localized in time. It was the result of a suggestion which I gave in hypnosis that the painful experience only should be forgotten; but unexpectedly the remembrances of the whole day disappeared. In other words, the dissociation of a particular remembrance robbed the personal consciousness of all other remembrances with which it was systematized. That it was so systematized was made evident by the fact that throughout the course of the day it had so dominated her mind that she was continuously under its emotional influence. The amnesia was therefore not only localized but systematized with the day’s experiences. It is to be noted that the hypnotic suggestion necessarily exerted its dissociating force subconsciously after waking.
Similarly in multiple personality, one alternating phase often has complete amnesia for the preceding epoch belonging to another phase. This amnesia may extend over a period of from a few minutes to years, according to the length of time that the second phase was in existence. It is therefore localized. But it is also systematized, not in the sense of relating to only a particular category of remembrances, such as those of a particular object—father, child, etc.—but in the sense of bearing upon all the experiences organized within a large system of sentiments, instincts, settings, etc., characteristic of the second personality. With the dissociation of this system the remembrances of its experiences go, too. Undoubtedly the dissociating force is that of the awakened sentiments, etc., of the succeeding phase. These are always antagonistic to those of the dissociated phase, although those of the one are not necessarily painful to the other. They are simply incompatible with one another, and it may quite well be that their force is subconsciously discharged. Systematized amnesia, on the other hand, may not be localized, bearing as it may only on a particular category of remembrances, let us say of a foreign language with which the subject previously was familiar.
7. The retrograde type of localized amnesia is common following emotional shocks. The case of Mme. D., made classical by Charcot and Janet, is a very excellent example. This woman lost not only all memory of the painful emotional state into which she was thrown by the brutal announcement of her husband’s death, but of the preceding six weeks. The amnesia for the episode might be accounted for on the theory of conflict, but it is difficult to explain the retrograde extension unless it be there was some systematization covering the six weeks’ period within the mental life of the patient not disclosed by the examination.
General and continuous amnesia, the one covering the whole previous life of the subject, the other for events as fast as they are experienced, also, though rarely, occur as the sequence of emotion.
Subconscious traumatic memories.—When an emotional complex has once been organized by an emotional trauma and more or less dissociated from the personality by the conflicting emotional impulses, it is conserved as a neurogram more or less isolated. The fact of amnesia for the experience is evidence of its isolation in that it cannot be awakened and synthesized with the personal consciousness. Now, given such an isolated neurogram, observation shows that it may be excited to autonomous subconscious activity by associative stimuli of one kind or another. It thus becomes an emotional subconscious memory-process and may by further incubation and elaboration induce phenomena of one kind or another.
This is readily understood when it is remembered that such a memory, or perhaps more precisely speaking its neurogram, is organized with one or more emotional dispositions (instincts) and these dispositions by their impulsive forces tend when stimulated to awaken the memory and carry its ideas to fulfillment. The subconscious memory thus acquires a striving to fulfil its aim. We ought to distinguish in this mechanism between the isolation of the neurogram and that of the process. The former is antecedent to the latter.
The phenomena which may be induced by such a subconscious memory may be of all kinds such as we have seen are induced by subconscious processes and emotions—hallucinations, various motor phenomena, disturbances of conscious thought, dreams and those phenomena which we have seen are the physiological and psychological manifestation of emotion and its conflicts, etc.
Undoubtedly the mental feebleness, manifested by a feeling of exhaustion or fatigue, which so frequently is the sequel of intense conscious emotion, favors the excitation to activity of such subconscious autonomous processes or memory when antecedent isolation has occurred. This enfeeblement of personality probably is the more marked the larger the systems included in the dissociation. Certain it is that in fatigued states, whether induced by physical or mental “storm and stress,” subconscious processes become more readily excited. The greater the dissociation the greater the mental instability and liability to autonomous processes. Time and again it was noted, for instance in the case of Miss B. and B. C. A., that when the primary personality was exhausted by physical and emotional strain, the subconscious personality was able to manifest autonomous activity producing all sorts of phenomena (when it could not do so in conditions of mental health) even to inhibiting the whole primary personality.[[259]] The direct testimony of the subconscious personality was to the same effect.
Mental confusion.—Fortunate is the person who has never felt embarrassment when the attention of others has been directed to himself, or when some act or thought which he wished to conceal has become patent to others, or when called upon without warning to make a speech in public. Unless one is endowed with extraordinary self-assurance he will become, under such or similar circumstances, bashful, self-conscious, and shy, his thought confused, and he will find it difficult to respond with ready tongue. Associated ideas à propos of the matter in hand fail to enter consciousness, his thoughts become blocked even to his mind becoming a blank; he hesitates, stammers, and stands dumb, or too many ideas, in disorderly fashion and without apparent logical relation, crowd in and he is unable to make selection of the proper words. In short, his mind becomes confused, perhaps even to the extent of dizziness. The ideas that do arise are inadequate and are likely to be inappropriate, painful, and perhaps suspicious. The dominating emotion is early reinforced by the awakening of its ally, the fear instinct, with all its physiological manifestations. Then tremor, palpitation, perspiration, and vasomotor disturbances break out. Shame may be added to the emotional state.
1. This reaction becomes intelligible if we regard it as one of conflict resulting in painful bashfulness and shame, inhibition of thought; the excitation of painful ideas, amnesia, and limitation of the field of consciousness. The self-regarding sentiment is awakened and dominates the content of consciousness. The conflict is primarily between two instincts organized within this sentiment—that of self-abasement (negative self-feeling) and that of self-assertion (positive self feeling). The impulsive force of the former, awakened by the stimulus of the situation—let us say the presence and imagined criticism of others—opposes and contends with that of the latter which is excited by the desire of the person to display his powers and meet the occasion. The result of the struggle between the two impulses is emotional agitation or bashfulness. If this bashfulness is “qualified by the pain of baffled positive self feeling” there results the emotion of shame.[[260]] But these emotional states are not the whole consequences of the conflict. Almost always fear comes to the rescue as a biological reaction for the protection of the individual and impels to flight. The impulsive force of this instinct is now united to that of self-abasement and the conjoined force inhibits or blocks the development of ideas, memories, and speech symbols appropriate to the occasion and dissociates many perceptions of the environment. On the other hand, the self-regarding sentiment evokes various associative abasing ideas of self and related memories. The victim is fortunate if unfounded suspicions and other painful thoughts (through which criticism of self is imagined and the situation falsely interpreted) do not arise. Or there may be an oscillation of ideas corresponding to the conflicting sentiments and instincts. A person in such a condition experiences mental confusion and embarrassment. The condition is often loosely spoken of as self-consciousness and shyness.
2. Painfully emotional self-consciousness of this type as the sequence of special antecedent psychogenetic factors is frequently met with as an obsession. Then fear, with its physiological manifestations, is always an obtrusive element. Individuals who suffer from this psychosis sometimes cannot even come into the presence of strangers or any public situation without experiencing an attack of symptoms such as I have somewhat schematically described. The phenomena may be summarized as bashfulness, emotion of fear, inhibition, dissociation, limitation of the field of consciousness, ideas of self, confusion of thought and speech, inappropriate and delayed response, delusions of suspicion, tremor, palpitation, etc.
The symptomatic structure of the psychoneuroses.—When studying the physiological manifestations of emotion (Lecture XIV), we saw how a large variety of disturbances of bodily functions, induced by the discharge of emotional impulses, may be organized into a symptom-complex which might, if repeatedly stimulated, recur from time to time. On the basis of these physiological manifestations we were able to construct a schema of the physiological symptoms occurring in the emotional psycho-neuroses. We obtained a structure of such symptoms corresponding to the facts of clinical experience. We then went on in the next lecture to examine the psychological disturbances induced by emotion and found a number of characteristic phenomena. The view was held that emotion is the driving force which bears along ideas to their end and makes the organism capable of activity. We found conflicts between opposing impulses resulting in repression, dissociation, and inhibition of ideas and instincts, and limitation of the field of consciousness. We saw that sentiments in which strong emotions were incorporated tended to become dominating, to the exclusion of other sentiments from consciousness, and to acquire organic intensity and thereby to be carried to fruition. We saw also that the dominating emotional discharges might come from sentiments within the field of consciousness, and therefore of which the individual is aware, or from entirely subconscious sentiments of which he is unaware. And we saw that conflicts might be between entirely conscious sentiments or between a conscious and a subconscious sentiment, and so on. (Indeed, a conflict may be between two subconscious sentiments as may be experimentally demonstrated with corresponding phenomena.)
Now the practical significance of these phenomena of emotion, both as observed in every-day life and under experimental conditions, lies in the fact that they enable us to understand the symptomatic structure, and up to a certain point the psychogenesis of certain psychoneuroses of very common occurrence. (For a complete understanding of the psychogenesis of any given psychoneurosis, such as a phobia, we must know all the antecedent experiences which formed the setting and gave meaning to the dominating ideas and determined the instincts which have become incorporated with them to form sentiments. This we saw when studying the settings in obsessions (Lectures XII and XIII).)
It is evident, that, theoretically, if antecedent conditions have prepared the emotional soil, and if an emotional complex, an intense sentiment, or instinct should be aroused by some stimulus, any one of a number of different possible psychopathic states might ensue, largely through the mechanism of conflict, according, on the one hand, to the degree and extent of the dissociation, inhibition, etc., established, and on the other to the character and systematization of the emotional complex or instinct. As with the physiological manifestations of emotion, we can construct various theoretical schemata to represent the psychological structure of these different states. Practically both types—the physiological and psychological—must necessarily almost always be combined.
1. The impulsive force of the emotion might repress all other ideas than the one in question from the field of consciousness, which would then be contracted to that of the limited emotional complex awakened; all opposing ideas and instincts would then be dissociated or inhibited—a state substantially of mono-ideism. Let us imagine the dominating emotional complex to be a mother’s belief that her child had been killed, this idea being awakened by the sudden announcement of the news. The parental sentiment with child as its object would become organized into a complex with the emotions of fear, sorrow, painful depressed feelings, etc., which the news excited. This complex, being deprived—as a result of the ensuing dissociation—of the inhibiting and modifying influence of all counteracting ideas, would be free to expend its conative force along paths leading to motor, visceral, and other physiological disturbances. An emotional complex of ideas would be then formed which after the restoration of the normal alert state would remain dormant, but conserved in the unconscious. Later, when the emotional complex is again awakened by some stimulus (associative thoughts), dissociation would again take place and the complex again become the whole of the personal consciousness for the time being. This theoretical schema corresponds accurately with one type of hysterical attack.
2. If again the awakened complex should be one which is constellated with a large system of dormant ideas and motives deposited in the unconscious[unconscious] by the experiences of life, the new field of consciousness would not be contracted to a mono-ideism. We should have to do with a phase of personality, one which was formed by a rearrangement of life’s experiences. In this case the usual everyday settings (or systems) of ideas being in conflict with the sentiments of the resurrected system would be dissociated and become dormant. The ideas, with their affects, which would come to the surface and dominate, would be those of previously dormant emotional complexes and their constellated system. The prevailing instincts and other innate dispositions would be, respectively, those corresponding to the two phases, the antagonistic dispositions being in each case inhibited. This schema would accurately correspond to a so-called “mood.” If the demarcation of systems were sharply defined and absolute so that amnesia of one for the other resulted, the new state would be recognized as one of dissociated or secondary personality. A “mood” and secondary personality would shade into one another.
3. Still another theoretical schema could be constructed if, following the hysterical dissociated state represented by schema 1, there were not a complete return to normality, i.e., complete synthesis of personality. The dissociation effected by the impulsive force of the evoked emotional complex and the repressed personal self-conscious-system might be so intense that, on the restoration of the latter, the former would remain dissociated in turn. The emotional complex would then, in accordance with what we know of the genesis of subconscious ideas, become split off from the personal consciousness and unable to enter the focus of awareness. Amnesia for the emotional experience would ensue. Such a split-off idea might, through the impulsive force of its emotion and that of its setting, take on independent activity and function coconsciously and produce various automatic phenomena; that is, phenomena which are termed automatic because not determined by the personal consciousness. The dissociation might include various sensory, motor and other functions, thereby robbing the personal consciousness of these functions (anesthesia, paralysis, etc.). Such a schema corresponds to the hysterical subconscious fixed idea (Janet).
In such a schema also, in accordance with what we know of the behavior of emotion, though the ideas of the complex remained subconscious, the emotion linked with them might erupt into the consciousness of the personal self. The person would then become aware of it without knowing its source. The emotion might be accompanied by its various physiological manifestations such as we have studied. If the emotion were one of fear the subject might be in an anxious state without knowing why he is afraid—an indefinable fear, as it is often called by the subjects of it.
4. If, owing to one or more emotional experiences, an intense sentiment were created in which is organized about its object one or more of the emotions of fear, anger, disgust, self-subjection, etc., with their physiological manifestations (tremor, palpitation, vasomotor disturbances, nausea, exhaustion, etc.) and their psychological disturbances (contraction of the field of consciousness, dissociation, etc.); and if the whole were welded into a complex, we would have the structure of an obsession. Such an organized complex would be excited from time to time by any associated stimulus and develop in the form of attacks: hence termed a recurrent psychopathic state as well as obsession. (As we have seen, the psychogenesis of the sentiment is to be found in antecedent experiences organized with its object giving meaning and persistence to the obsession.)
5. Finally (to add one more schema out of many that might be constructed), if a number of physiological disturbances (pain, secretory, gastric, cardiac, etc), such as occur as the symptoms of a disease, were through repeated experiences associated and thereby organized with the idea of the disease, they would recur as an associative process whenever the idea was presented to consciousness. Here we have the structure of an “association or habit-neurosis,” a disease mimicry. Numerous examples of the type of cardiac, gastric, pulmonary, laryngeal, joint, and other diseases might be given. The physical symptoms in such neuroses are obtrusive, while the psychical elements (including emotion) which, of course, are always factors, conscious or subconscious, remain in the background.
The study of the individual psychoneuroses belongs to special pathology, and need not concern us here. We are only occupied with the general principles involved in their structure and psycho-genesis.
[245]. Inhibition and dissociation, although often loosely used as interchangeable terms, are not strictly synonymous, in that, theoretically at least, they are not coextensive. That which is inhibited may be absolutely, even if temporarily, suppressed as a functioning process, as in physiological inhibition (e. g., of reflexes, motor acts, etc.); or it may be only inhibited from taking part in the mechanisms of the personal consciousness, and thereby dissociated from that psychophysiological system. In the latter case the inhibited process is not absolutely suppressed, but may be capable under favoring conditions of independent functioning outside of that system. This is dissociation in its more precise sense. Inhibition may be said to have induced dissociation, and then the two may be regarded as only different aspects of one and the same thing. In the former case (absolute suppression) the inhibited process cannot function at all, as in certain types of amnesic aphasia when the memory for language is functionally suppressed. Inhibition therefore may or may not be equivalent to dissociation. Practically as observed in psychological phenomena it is often difficult to distinguish between them, and it is convenient to consider them together.
[246]. The Dissociation, p. 189.
[247]. One sees the same phenomenon in every-day life. Let a person acquire under a sense of injury a dislike of one who previously was a friend, and every sentiment involving friendship, admiration, esteem, gratitude, loyalty, etc., is repressed with a complete change of attitude. Politics furnishes many examples.
[248]. Exemplified in Miss B. by Sally, in O. N. by the b mood, and in B. C. A. by phase B, and also in the earlier stages of the case by phase A.
[249]. My Life as a Dissociated Personality, Jl. Ab. Psychol., December-January, 1908-9.
[250]. The Mental State of Hystericals, p. 205.
[251]. The Dissociation, cf. Index: “Emotion, the Disintegrating Effect of,” and Chapters XXVIII and XXIX.
[252]. The Dissociation, p. 462.
[253]. We shall study in other lectures the forces and mechanisms which effected the dissociation in this case.
[254]. See Morton Prince: Some of the Present Problems of Abnormal Psychology, St. Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences (1904), Vol. 5, p. 772; also, The Psychological Review, March-May, 1905, p. 139.
[255]. Probably derived from the “will to believe,” the desire to please the experimenter, or other elements in the hypnotic setting. The conception of a “censor” or desire to protect the personal consciousness from something painful is an unnecessary complication.
[256]. The Dissociation.
[257]. Cf. My Life as a Dissociated Personality, Jl. Abn. Psychol., October-November, 1908.
[258]. T. Brailsford Robertson, in a very recent communication on the “Chemical Dynamics of the Central Nervous System” and “The Physiological conditions underlying heightened suggestibility, hypnosis, multiple personality, sleep, etc.” (Folia Neuro-Biologica, Bd. VII, Nr. 4/5, 1913), has attempted to correlate these conditions and also amnesia (as one of their phenomena) with the isolation of paths “canalised” by auto-catalysed chemical reactions. These processes he concludes, from previous studies, “underlie and determine the activities of the central nervous system (and therefore the physical correlates of mental phenomena).” (See Lecture V, p. [124].)
[259]. The Dissociation, Chapter XXIX; My Life as a Dissociated Personality, pp. 39 and 41.
[260]. In this analysis I follow McDougall who seems to me to have analyzed clearly and adequately the emotional conditions. (Social Psychology, p. 145.)
LECTURE XVII
THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMIC ELEMENTS OF HUMAN PERSONALITY
We ought to be able now to construct out of the various elements we have studied a general scheme, if not the details, of that composite whole which we call Personality. This should include its structure as well as its elements and dynamics.
It is obvious that we must have a fairly comprehensive and accurate conception of these factors if we would understand those alterations of personality which are met with as pathological conditions and particularly their psychogenesis. Multiple personality, for instance, as it occurs in the alternating and coconscious types can only be comprehended through a knowledge of the normal structure and dynamic mechanisms. On the other hand the phenomena of this latter pathological condition throw a flood of light upon the normal and can be utilized to test the validity of theories. I shall complete these lectures by a study from the psychogenetic point of view of a case of dissociated and multiple personality. Certain phenomena met with in this derangement of the normal have been frequently cited in the preceding lectures and certain general principles underlying them and the alterations giving rise to multiplication of the personality and character in one individual have been referred to. A study of the psychogenesis of a concrete case will on the one hand illustrate these principles and, on the other, the structure and dynamics of normal personality.
Before making such a study, however, we ought to have a working conception of the normal; and this we are entitled, from the point of view of dynamic psychology, to construct on the basis of data supplied by studies of abnormal and normal mental behavior. The older way of considering human personality was to conceive it as an “ego” with various faculties. We may now consider it as a composite structure built by experience upon a foundation of performed, inherited, psycho-physiological dynamic mechanisms (instincts, etc.), containing within themselves their own driving forces.
Let us glance for a moment at this foundation with a view to a full comprehension of the significance of the innate instinctive and other dispositions composing its structure. The structure and the dynamics of these dispositions themselves we have already studied (Chap. XV). Their teleological aspect needs further exposition for in their functioning the processes which they carry out have a distinctly purposive character for the personality.
Every instinct has an aim or end which it strives to fulfil and which alone satisfies it; and it contains in itself the driving force which, as an urge, or impulse, sets into activity the mechanism and carries the instinctive process, unless blocked by some other process, to completion and satisfies the aim of the instinct. Thus the instinct of flight impelled by the urge of fear has an aim to escape from danger and is not satisfied until the danger is escaped. Until that end is gained fear will not subside. If impeded in its activity it may awaken the pugnacity instinct which coming to the rescue may fight for safety. Similarly the instincts of acquisition and self-assertion are not satisfied and their urge persists until their ends are gained—the acquisition of certain objects in the one case and self-display or domination of other individuals or situations in the other case. Obviously the instincts and other innate dispositions have a biological significance, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, in that they serve the preservation of the individual and species and the perpetuation of the latter. And obviously in the drive to satisfy their aims they determine and govern behavior. But in doing this they become modified and controlled by experience—by the dispositions which are acquired by experience. In this way the behavior of the individual becomes adapted to the specific situations of the environment. Necessarily these modifications of the workings of the innate mechanisms by the imposition of experience upon and within them become very complicated and the problems of instinct and experience thereby evoked have been the object of much study and debate.
Now with such fundamental innate mechanisms as a basis the composite structure of personality is built up by experience, according to the theory I am presenting.
By experience new “dispositions” are deposited (i.e., acquired), and organized, systematized, not only amongst themselves but integrated with the inherited mechanisms. Thus, on the one hand, are formed new mechanisms which in their functioning manifest themselves as mental processes and behavior, and, on the other, the instinctive mechanisms are brought under control by experience and mental processes acquire a driving force, or an extra driving force, from the impulsive forces of the integrated instinctive mechanisms.
Accordingly we may say: Personality is the sum total of all the biological innate dispositions, impulses, tendencies, appetites and instincts of the individual and of all the acquired dispositions and tendencies—acquired by experience. And to these it is limited.
The former would embrace inherited, innate psychophysiological mechanisms or arrangements, such as those of the emotions, feelings, appetites and other tendencies manifested in instinctive reactions to the environment; the latter the memories, ideas, sentiments and other intellectual dispositions acquired and organized within the personality by the experiences of life.
The integration into one functioning organism, or whole, of all these innate and acquired dispositions with their mechanisms and inherent forces by which they come into play is personality.
As thus defined personality includes more than character. Character is the sum total of the predominating dispositions, or tendencies, popularly called traits. Thus in the domain of the innate dispositions every personality includes anger, fear, curiosity, and other instinctive reactions, but one personality might possess an angry temperament, while another an amiable temperament, meaning that in the one anger is aroused quickly and by a large variety of situations; in the other it is rarely aroused and by few situations; in the one anger is excited whenever the individual is thwarted, opposed, or wounded in his feelings; in the other the response is never or rarely anger in such situations but perhaps sorrow, or pity, or some other feeling. One is said to be quick to anger; the other slow to anger. Hence the character of the one is said to be “good tempered,” the other “bad tempered.” Yet every normal personality will manifest anger in some situation.
Likewise with fear: one person reacts with fear to all sorts of threatening situations; another rarely and to very few. One is said to have a timorous, or an apprehensive, the other a brave, or bold, “sandy,” character. Yet every one manifests fear in one of its phases (apprehension, anxiety, etc.) in some situation. There is no personality born without the fear instinct.
Likewise in the domain of acquired dispositions personality includes the ideals, “sentiments,” desires, points of view, attitudes, etc., of the individual in respect to himself, to life and the environment. These being acquired by educational, social and environmental experiences largely differ in every individual. Some become common, or substantially common to all or many. But those that are peculiar to, or acquire a dominating position and influence in the personality, play their part—and even a greater part than the primitive instinctive dispositions—in distinguishing the character of one personality from that of another. For in a large measure they determine the reaction to situations, the behavior and the modes of thought as intellectual processes. They stamp the quality or character of the intelligence (its content) rather than the degree or capacity of the same.[[261]] On this side, then, character is so much of personality as is represented by the dominating acquired dispositions of the individual. But as innate and acquired dispositions become inter-organized by experience, as traits, into complex functioning wholes, or complexes, acquired traits include the former.
Thus a personality may exhibit a character recognized as idealistic, altruistic, selfish, egotistic, social, anti-social, etc., according to what ideals, “sentiments,” morals, etc., have been acquired by experience. It is in these respects that he is largely the product of his education and environment, the influences of which have also organized his innate dispositions (instincts, etc.,) with his intellectual processes.
We have already seen (Lectures IX and XV) that the acquired dispositions are, by the very experiences by which they are acquired, organized into complexes and systems of complexes which are conserved as such in the storehouse of the unconscious to be drawn upon by memory or to be awakened again to activity as occasion may demand to serve the purposes of mental life. Now, large numbers of these complexes have not only an organized structure but a dynamic potentiality and in consequence of these two characteristics each tends to function as a dynamic psychic whole. For in such complexes are incorporated one or more emotional or other instinctive mechanisms from which their chief energy and aim are derived. (This theory postulates not only a structure of mental dispositions but a correlated structure of hypothetical physiological dispositions which I have termed the “neurogram.”)[[262]] In so far as dynamic complexes and systems of complexes have structure and tend to function as psychic wholes they take on the character of unitary mechanisms or systems. From this point of view the most fruitful conception of the structure of personality is that which views it as built up of dynamic units which may be classed as primary and secondary. The primary units are the innate psychophysiological arrangements or mechanisms which we have agreed to call the instincts, or innate tendencies or dispositions, in many of which are incorporated the emotions and other affects. These primary units become organized by experience into larger units or unitary systems. Whether they are also innately organized amongst themselves and by themselves into larger systems as some maintain (Shand) may or may not be the case. It is not necessary for our present purposes to consider this problem. It is sufficient that those dispositions which are innate, such as those of anger, fear, joy, etc., do become organized by and with experiences into larger and larger dynamic unitary systems.
The secondary units are the acquired complexes and systems of complexes within which are incorporated one or more primary units. In these are found as already mentioned the ideals, “sentiments,” wishes, aspirations, forebodings, apprehensions, and all other organized systems of thought which, on the one hand have their roots in the deposited experiences of life and, on the other, their promptings and urges in the primitive innate instincts and other dispositions. Thus the innate and acquired dispositions are organized into unitary systems of greater and greater complexity but each having a tendency and, under certain conditions of dissociation, a greater or less freedom to function as a psychic whole. And the integration or potential integration of all these units and unitary complexes and systems into a functioning whole is personality. This does not mean that all the primary and secondary units take part in the functioning of the personality; on the contrary, as we have seen, many lie dormant, for one reason or the other, in the unconscious. But, as we have also seen, they are potentially capable of being awakened and determining mental and bodily behavior. Furthermore, evidence has been adduced to show that the various units of personality do not always coöperate and function harmoniously with one another, as no doubt they ought to do, but sometimes are incited to conflicts and then they play the deuce with the individual and he fails to be able to adapt himself to the realities of life.
Amongst these acquired unitary systems there are certain ones which are of preëminent importance for the personality in the determination of mental behavior. I refer to those complexes known as the sentiments. By this term, as we have seen, is understood the organization of an acquired disposition—the idea of an object—or complex of such dispositions (the psychic whole of idea plus its “meaning” derived from the setting of associated experiences) with one or more innate emotional dispositions. It must not be overlooked for one moment that a sentiment is something more than the organization of an emotion or other affect with an idea. There is nothing novel or fruitful in such a limited conception of the structure of a sentiment as this. A sentiment in its structure is the organization of an idea and meaning with an emotional instinct which has an aim and end which the instinct strives to attain and which alone satisfies the urge of the instinct. Such a structure has great significance and the conception is a most fruitful one. For because of this structure the excitation of the idea necessarily involves the excitation of the instinct and the impulse of the latter determines behavior in reference to the object of the idea and carries the instinct to fruition. Thus if the sentiment be one of love the excitation of the instincts organized with the object determines through their urge the behavior to cherish or possess the object of the sentiment. And the attainment of this aim alone satisfies it. If the sentiment be one of apprehension of an object the instinct of fear incites behavior to escape from the danger contained in the meaning of the object. A sentiment in the hierarchy of units is a unitary system built up by the organization (through experience) of primary units with a secondary unitary complex (idea, meaning, etc.).
The importance of the sentiments in the dynamics of personality and therefore in the determination of mental and bodily behavior I have already dwelt upon (Lecture XV). But there is one sentiment which plays such an important rôle both in these respects and in that unitary system which we know as the empirical self, or consciousness of self that something more needs to be said about it. This sentiment is that which McDougall has termed the “self-regarding sentiment” which is intimately bound up with the idea or conception of the empirical self, and both should be considered together. It is only by regarding, as it seems to me, the conception or idea of the empirical self as a secondary unitary complex organized by experience that we can approach the solution of the problem of the self and understand the phenomenon of two selves in one personality, as so often occurs in multiple personality.
The self-regarding sentiment, according to McDougall’s theoretical analysis—and I may say his analysis has been confirmed by my own practical analyses of concrete cases—has structurally organized within it by experience the two opposing instincts, self-abasement and self-assertion, but either may be the dominating one. The idea or conception of self, proper, is, according to the theory, a complex and integrated whole organized by experience like the self-regarding sentiment. “McDougall has argued,” to quote what I have written in a study of multiple personality,[[263]] “and I think soundly ‘that the idea of self and the self-regarding sentiment are essentially social products; that their development is effected by constant interplay between personalities, between the self and society; that, for this reason, the complex conception of self thus attained implies constant reference to others and to society in general, and is, in fact, not merely a conception of self, but always one’s self in relation to other selves.’ But, as I would argue, this formulation must be considerably broadened. Every sentiment (and therefore the self-regarding sentiment) has roots in and is consequently related to what has gone before. And the experiences of what has gone before of the self, i.e., what has been previously experienced (ideally or realistically) by the individual in reference to the object of the sentiment, determines the attitude of mind and point of view towards that object, and is responsible for the organization of the object and instinct into a sentiment. The sentiment is the resultant and the expression of those antecedent experiences. They form its setting and give it meaning beyond the mere emotional tone. You cannot separate sentiment, conceived as a linked object and emotional instinct, from such a setting. They form a psychic whole. This is not only theoretically true, but actual dealings with pathological sentiments (in which the principle can be most clearly studied), called phobias and other emotional obsessions, bring out this intimate relation between the sentiment and the conserved setting of antecedent experiences. Such practical dealings also show not only that the sentiment is the outgrowth of and the expression of this setting, but that by changing the setting the sentiment can be correspondingly altered.... I want to emphasize that in the dynamic functioning of a sentiment the setting coöperates in maintaining and carrying it to the fruition and satisfaction of its aim.”
So far as concerns the incorporation of the two instincts, self-abasement and self-assertion, “McDougall with keen insight and analysis, has argued that the self-regarding sentiment is organized with these two innate dispositions, but in different degrees in different individuals, and with the growth of the mind one may replace the other in the adaptation of the individual to the changing environment. Taking two extreme types, he draws a picture of the proud, arrogant, self-assertive, domineering person, with the feeling of masterful superiority, and angry resentment of criticism and control, and who knows no shame and is indifferent to moral approval and disapproval. In this personality the instincts of self-assertion and anger are the dominating innate dispositions of the self-regarding sentiment. On the other hand we have the type of the submissive, dependent character, with a feeling of inferiority, when the contrary disposition is the dominating one. McDougall’s analysis was beautifully illustrated in the case of Miss Beauchamp by two personalities, BI and BIV, fragments of the original self, which were actual specimens from real life of his theoretic types. Again McDougall’s theoretic analysis of the conception of self, showing the idea to be one ‘always of one’s self in relation to other selves,’ is concretely illustrated and substantiated by the dissection of this mind effected by trauma.”
The study of another case, that of “Maria” furnished the same results as respects the two personalities that were manifested, as did that of “B. C. A.”
As to the conception of the empirical self and as “an important addition to this theory both from a structural and dynamic point of view, I would insist again that the complex conception of self includes a setting of mental experiences of much wider range, in which the idea of self is incorporated and which gives the idea meaning. The range of this setting extends beyond ‘other selves’ and ‘society in general’ and may include almost any of life’s experiences.” By way of illustration let us take the two selves known as the “Saint” (BI) and the “Realist” (BIV) in the case of Miss Beauchamp. "Concretely and more correctly the psychological interpretation of the ‘reference to others and society in general,’ of the relation of one’s self to other selves, would in this particular instance be as follows: the Saint’s conception of self (with the self-regarding sentiment) was related to an ideal world and ideal selves contained in religious conceptions; and hence it became organized in a larger setting which gave it a meaning of divine perfection such as is obtained, or aspired to by saints, and in which were incorporated the emotional dispositions of awe, reverence, love, self-abasement, etc. This conception was not a product of, or related to the social environment. Rather it was the product of an ideal world. She, as has been said, lived in a world of idealism, oblivious of the realities round about her, which she saw not ‘clearly and truly’ but as they were colored by her imagination. Her idea of self thus became the ‘saintly sentiment’ of self-perfection.
“On the other hand the conception of self in BIV, the Realist, was related to and set in the realities of this social world as they clearly are, the world of her objective environment. And in this conception of self the instinctive dispositions of self-assertion and anger contributed the promptings and motive force to dominate these realities and bend them to her will.”
It must be an obvious conclusion from the numerous and multiform subconscious phenomena which were cited in previous lectures that all the unitary and complexes and systems which enter into the composite structure of personality do not necessarily emerge into awareness. Some function subconsciously and in this way determine conscious mental processes and behavior. Many remain conserved in the unconscious and have only a potential reality in that they remain latent but susceptible of being awakened into activity. It is also true that in the course of the growth of the personality many become modified by experience and metamorphosed into new sentiments, new ideals, new desires, new apprehensions, new meanings, etc.
The necessity for adaptation of the personality to the realities of life necessarily gives rise to conflicts, for the urges of some unitary complexes cannot be satisfied, and some are incompatible with the situations which reality presents, or with one another. A practical solution of the problem is compulsory. Compensation is sought. Sometimes compensation or compromise is successfully attained; sometimes it is not. Or the solution may be accepted and the urge of a rebellious system incompatible with the demands of reality is suppressed by voluntary or automatic repression. When neither compensation nor compromise is attained, or when the situation is not accepted and the rebellious urge continues, then disruption or disarrangement of the personality may follow with such resulting phenomena as have been already described. Integrated systems may become disintegrated or dissociated, permitting of independent autonomous functioning of conflicting systems. And of the unitary systems taking part in such conflicts one or more may, as we have seen, function subconsciously. Furthermore, as observation shows, dissociated complexes may take on growth independently of the integrated systems of the personal consciousness and thus create large subconscious systems. On the other hand both one or more primary units (innate dispositions) and secondary unitary complexes and systems (acquired dispositions) may by the force of conflicts be completely repressed and cease to function within the personality. Thus, for example, certain instincts may be suppressed and systematic amnesia and other defects be produced. And so on.
Without pursuing further this exposition of the empirical personality or going into details, it would seem that some such conception of the structure of personality as that of which I have given a mere outline will alone satisfy the phenomena actually observed under normal and abnormal conditions. Indeed the theory would seem to be a compelling induction from the phenomena derived from clinical observation and experiment.
Against this preliminary sketch of the structure and dynamic mechanisms of the normal personality as a background I will in the next lecture present a study of a case of dissociated and multiple personality, as the alterations of structure and the dynamic manifestations observed in cases of this kind, on the one hand, concretely illustrate the principles involved, and, on the other, present some of the most important data on which the theory is founded.
[261]. “Intelligence tests” therefore do not afford tests of character which is the most important element of personality from a sociological point of view. (See “Character vs. Intelligence in Personality Studies” by Dr. Guy Fernald, Jour. Abnormal Psychology, Vol. XV, No. 1.)
[262]. Indeed I cannot see that mental “disposition” has any reality excepting so far as it is derived from its correlated physiological disposition. (See p. 266.)
[263]. Miss Beauchamp: “The Theory of the Psychogenesis of Multiple Personality”; Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. XV, Nos. 2-3; pp. 108, 120-121.